Custom header connector cable

Today I will show you how to make a female-to-female multipin connector cable for standard headers with help of some heat shrink tubing. You can use same technique for making male to male or male to female cables with as many pins as desired.  It's a real "ghetto" way (compared to using special crimp pins, headers and crimping tool) to make  a cable, but will do in a pinch.

Part List:

    Heat-Shrink Tubing of 3 various sizes (from really small for single wire, to large one that can cover 4 pin connector). You can find it at RadioShack or Home Depot.
    Pieces of wire (I got mine from CAT-5 cable I had)
    2.54 mm Single Row Female Pin Header (eBay)

Tools:

    Wire cutters
    Wire strippers (24 awg)
    Soldering Iron
    3rd hand tool (optional)
    Heat Gun or hair drier

Step 1 Cut Pin Header row

With wire cutters carefully break pin header row to the size you need. I found it’s better to brake on the next pin, so if you need 4 pins, break at 5th.

Comments

[pfred2]

Skip all the shrink wrap and just glob some hot glue on it. Then you have a fancy "molded" connector!

[bratan]

Oh yeah that will work too :)

[pfred2]

Hey congratulations on getting on the front page!

What doesn't work for me is a 2.54mm connector though. That is a tenth of an inch on center standard inline connector there. Whether you metric freaks like it or not!

[bratan]

It works fine with standard male headers, I use it with 5 and 4 pin headers, no bent pins :) I could be wrong about mm size, I got it from the auction description where I purchased female header.