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Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by dylan604 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @02:40PM (#44513455)
I've never seen reference to mate/wire side instead of male/female. Is that a Euro thing?
Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by exmadscientist on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:18PM (#44513818)
That is a separate issue. There are (at least) four different distinctions in cable connectors:

1. Jack vs plug. The "plug" side is the side that moves. The "jack" side is the side that doesn't move, or moves less. Think of a wall outlet: the "jack" is the outlet and the "plug" is the, well, plug.

2. Male housing vs female housing. The "male" housing goes into the "female" housing. Simple enough (if you don't have to explain it to your six-year-old...).

3. Male terminal vs female terminal. Again, the male goes into the female. But the little conductive pins don't have to (and, often, don't) match the gender of the housing itself. Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 is an excellent connector series that is notorious for having the terminal gender reversed from the housing gender. (And of course, both genders of crimp terminal are available.) This can cause problems if your communication is not perfect, but is still good enough that people actually think they can trust you.

4. Mating view vs wire view. "Mating view" is the view that you'd see if you were sitting on top of the mating connector, just before you got squished. "Cable view" is the view that you'd see if you were riding on the wiring behind the housing. They are mirror images of one another. It can be impossible to tell from a pinout drawing which view it is, even if there is a polarization feature (pin 1 marks are often OK, latches are usually not), so you HAVE to say. The "component view" vs "solder side view" distinction (among other names) is analogous for PCB mount connectors.

All of these issues are but a small part of what makes connectors utterly horrible to deal with. They have wasted more time, money, and effort than you will ever know.

Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by dylan604 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:30PM (#44513930)
> They have wasted more time, money, and effort than you will ever know.

Oh, I'm well aware. I've been making custom cables since high school back when Moses was a baby floating down the river.

If it weren't for all of the confusion, we wouldn't have lovely phrases like "fuck the truck" to help remember which end of the cable goes to the truck.

Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by exmadscientist on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @07:21PM (#44515709)
Making cables by hand, or sending out orders to the cable factory during NPI?

By hand you can usually only screw it up four or five times (for a cable there are only four ways to make). Sending out orders during New Product Introduction (so nobody knows what they're doing, and the answer to "how did that work last time?" is "in fact, that has never once in the history of human civilization worked") to a cable vendor that engineering (you) recommended be dropped due to quality problems including (but not limited to) "does not read the cable drawing", but management insisted we keep using because "we know how to order from them" (which was awful -- hand delivering parts, dealing with angry dogs in the way, drunken contacts at the vendor, and finding out that not only do their neighbors hate them (no surprise), but they managed to personally (personally!) get on the bad list with their FedEx guy; this is not easy) -- so that is no excuse)... that's how you get to the real pain.

Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by SAI_Peregrinus on Thursday July 10, 2025 @07:21PM (#44526808)
I see you've worked with my employer's cable vendor before!
Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by SAI_Peregrinus on Thursday July 10, 2025 @07:17PM (#44526783)
Anderson Powerpole connectors[1][2] have hermaphroditic housings, hermaphroditic contacts, and they're both usually on flexible leads so there's not usually a good distinction between jack & plug!

Antennas are the external fertilization of connector sexing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole [2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rBkcZlOyPsc (NSFW unless you're in the trades)

Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by omgtehlion on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:01PM (#44513652)
I suppose this is about different thing: male/female are about two parts of connector mating together. And each of these parts has mating side (to the other) and side where wires come in. This is the first time I see this distinction though (usually only mating side is considered)...
Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by gia_ferrari on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @02:54PM (#44513602)
They specify different things. The wire side of a bulkhead connector may be male or female. Some connectors (i.e. the Molex ones you used to see at Radio Shack) are even designed so you can make a custom arrangement of male/female contacts within one connector housing.
Re:Splice: Cable Harness Design Made Simple by SoftTalker on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @02:48PM (#44513529)
Maybe a modernization of terms, such as replacing "master/slave" terminology with "controller/worker" or similar in various computing or mechanical systems?