Dupont crimp-on connectors marathon!

Tonight, I’m helping my better half with a work-related project. Nearly a hundred and fifty 4-AA battery holders and the same number of mini speakers need to have breadboard-friendly connectors affixed to the ends of their leads and I have accepted the challenge. The first step was separating a whole bunch of connectors (male “Dupont” crimp-on connectors) free from the reel on which they come when you buy ’em from Taobao sellers. To confirm that it was doable in a reasonable amount of time, I started up my pomodoro timer and went to work on a leftover bit of reel with a pair of side cutters. Long before the twenty-five minutes were up, I’d finished. By counting the round holes on the discarded reel-edge (each hole corresponding to a connector), I verified that I’d freed in excess of 200. Pleasantly surprised a how quickly it had gone, I dove back in.

In the photo above, I’m weighing a rice measuring cup full of the little varmints, after having tared the empty cup’s weight. When I’d weighed some individual pins, the scale had fluctuated between 0.08g and 0.09g. Using the latter value to estimate how many were in the cup (which the same scale reported contained roughly 100.58 grams of pins), I’m confident that I’ve got at least 1100 to work with. That should be more than sufficient.