"Gender" of servo connectors

The plastic housing and metal contacts together are generally referred to as the connector. So, yes you needed the male connector, not the female one.

1: The JR style connectors use the same housing (a modified AMP Berg style) for male and female connectors; the contacts are different and there's a shroud for the male connector. I can't say for sure about Futaba, but it looks to be the same basic style with a different way of polarizing the plug. 2: Connector gender usually goes by the gender of the contacts, and AFAIK RC parlance has the servo pigtail being female and the receiver contacts being male. 3: The politically correct parlance is "plug" and "socket", to avoid any indelicate thoughts when you're sliding those connectors home.

It is. While R/C servos may be the exception (or not), standard electronics practice is to define gender by the conductors, not the housings.

It is. Electrical connectors should be defined by the "pins", not the housing. Look at the "molex" connectors for your HD in your computer. The housing is technically "male" because it fits into a socket on the HD but the connectors slide over the pins on the HD, ergo it's a female connector.

Took me several days to beat that into the head of my intern here at work - he kept putting the wrong sex connector on wiring harnesses.

This is an interesting subject, so I'm anxious to see how everyone identifies male from female connectors. If you're over 7 or 8 years old, you should know the difference.

I have a Futaba 7CAP/CHP radio, so I can tell you my servos have 'female' connectors. What's the difference? No matter what the connector shell looks like, look into the open end. If you see 'pins' it's the male. If you see 'holes', it's female. Do I make myself clear? Need I explain further!

OK! In case of the 'male' connector, the shell (what ever it's shape) must protect the 'pins' from being shorted or damaged (which ever, pos. or neg.). The 'female' connector's shell must always 'mate' with the male connector.

The 'general' shape of a connector shell is purposely designed different (insides and out), so there is no chance of a mistaken electrical connection. To complicate the situation, sometimes the pos. & neg. wires (blk. & red.) are reversed if 'common' industrial shell connectors are used. In other words, you have to watch carefully what you're doing.

The design of the connectors is also done for commercial (profit) reasons. If it's Futaba, you must use Futaba accessories. Same with 'JR', HiTech, Airtronics, Hobbico and the others.

____________________________________________ Earl Scherz>> With servo connectors, does one describe "male" and "female" by the

Thanks, MK, for showing us proof that the builders of R/C equipment do things the worng way! Now the question is WHY!!!

Geoff

So, Red, let me congratulate you. You type very well for an 6 year old.

T

You are correct : the definition of gender relates to the contacts not the housing so male connectors have pins and female connectors have receptacles and the gender of the housing is irrelevant. But this is hard to explain to some people...

Hth,

| > With servo connectors, does one describe "male" and "female" by the | > electrical connectors, or by the plastic housings? I ordered some | > female connectors from Balsa Products for making my own servo | > extensions, but was sent the male pins and female plastic housings. The | > company used the plastic housings to define gender, NOT the connectors | > themselves. Is this common practice? It seems bass ackwards to me. | > | You are correct : the definition of gender relates to the contacts not the | housing so male connectors have pins and female connectors have receptacles and | the gender of the housing is irrelevant. But this is hard to explain to some | people...

Of course it's hard to explain -- you're convinced that you're right, and yet the person you're likely to be trying to explain it to is convinced that they're right, and neither of you is likely to be convinced of the accuracy of the other's argument.

`Gender' in the case of electrical connectors is just a mostly agreed-upon convienence -- there is no real `right' or `wrong' beyond what most people use. (i.e. if you define things differently than 99% of the people out there, you may not be `wrong', but you'll still have a lot of trouble in trying to deal with others.)

It's not usually an issue until you have mixed (sort of) genders in a single connector, like with the servo connectors. It seems counter-intuitive to me, but connectors like this --

are generally called `male', even though they seem more female than male to me. *shrug*

(Perhaps the problem is the use of the `male' and `female' terms. I've got some male parts of my own, and they don't really have too much in common with the plugs we use to connect servos with. (A bananna plug is a closer approximation, but even that analogy has issues.))

Since I'm not interested in changing the world or what people call this sort of connector, I just call it `male' like everybody else, and when I order something online, I almost always get the right item. If there's any doubt, I'll find a picture of what I want or find something similar on the Tower site and send them a link to it.

My son is three now, and he's fascinated with `pluggers'. Except that in his world, `plugger' refers to both the things you put into the outlet, and the outlet itself. :) (So I guess `pluggers' is the unisex version of male and female ...)

(He'll be a lot of fun in a few years as I get to teach him to fly my planes. But for now, he's dangerous, as even a screwdriver and an alectrical 110 volt outlet are both `pluggers' and obviously meant to go together ...)

Regardless of case or pins, make sure that the other party you're talking to knows which way you're talking.

"Futaba J female (you know the one with the holes)" may be long-winded but you are saying exactly waht you want to be assumed.

Like why tripe is called so -- someone said that and everyone else agreed, even there may have been more technically exact and proper terms being used ("cow stomach").

Don't sweat it!

That's the bottom line all right, Bruce! I e-mailed Tony Stillman at Radio South and asked him why. His reply was, " I dunno, it just is." :-\

Now that I know, I won't! But then I've been playing with little toy airplanes for most of my sixty-one years, and only now learned that for servo connectors, it's the housing, not the electrical connectors, that define what you're buying. Live and learn!

Thanks, y'all, for your input!

Geoff

Sorry my friend, connectors have always been classified by the housing and not the pins. This was taught to me 50 years ago in electronic engineering school. It has always been thus. Regards Gene

Quick reality check, Gene -- what is the gender of a chassis-mount BNC connector?

Well, you misremember what you were taught - understandable after 50 years. There is no ambiguity about it at all and it's one of the very few cases where imho a definition is woth fighting over.

Anyway, the picture near the top of is correctly described.

Hth,

Geoff I ran into the same issue when I was ordering a battery for my transmitter that needed a non standard connector. The lady at Battereies America referred to the connector as female based on the plastic housing, while I thought the same connector as male because it is the one with the pins (as opposed to the sockets the pins fit into). This caused me great distress because we were using different conventions and I really didn't know if I would get the correct connector until the package arrived at my home. So your query is of great interest to me.

Ed

Well, this thread about male and female has gone long enough. Male is obvious as is female...which, if no one is offended, reminds me of a joke about the little three year old boy and girl, somehow naked together at the beach. The little girl looks at the boy and asks.."What is that?". The little boy looks down and says, "I don't know!". The little girl says, " Can I touch it?", to which the little boys says "No way..you already broke yours off!" So if you R/C'rs are still having trouble with male and female...just look down... and if you are taking the R/C Radio manufacturers to task for having slightly different male and female plugs, consider the wide variance of the splines on all the different make of servo output shafts... Now there is a classic case of a disservice to the modelers... My thoughts on the subject anyway... Regards to all Frank Schwartz

80 years old and I know the difference.....

And then we have the Sermos (Anderson Power Pole) connectors - male or female? Or were they purposely designed for our PC generation? :-)

Red

| Well, this thread about male and female has gone long enough. Male is | obvious as is female...

Not on electrical connectors it's not. Well, on some it's pretty obvious but on others it's not, and it's pretty clear that there's no general consensus on the more complicated connectors.

If you're not sure if the vendor considers this plug to be male or female, it's best to include a picture or describe it just to make sure you're getting what you need.

| and if you are taking the R/C Radio manufacturers to task for having | slightly different male and female plugs, consider the wide variance | of the splines on all the different make of servo output shafts... | Now there is a classic case of a disservice to the modelers...

There's plenty of cases of disservice to the modelers, but that's a damn fine example -- and one that's not always obvious, which makes it even worse, because sometimes you learn that you used the wrong servo horn when you lose control of your plane ...

Another, more obvious example is the different shifts for the radio gear found in the US. They could just stick with positive shift or just negative shift ... but no ...

Or how PCM is different for every single manufacturer ...

Or how different manufacturers put the four control-stick axis's on different channels (though I'm not talking about Mode 1 vs Mode 2 -- that's an issue for the end user, not so much the vendor.)

Though perhaps I should consider myself fortunate that most glow plugs are interchangable (except for 0.049 and small Norvel ones, guess.)

And that servos generally work with any RX (though sometimes the plugs differ) ... that's pretty much a godsend.