Gold Tips

Gold tips or fingers, usually refer to the terminals on a card-edge connector of a PCB.

The application of gold fingers  to an edge connector provides an ideal surface finish for high-wear applications, such as an insertion connector. This is partly due to the fact that hardened gold provides a very planar surface that is resistant to wear from repeated insertions. For the manufacture of printed circuit boards, a bright hard gold with a mixture of nickel and/or cobalt is often used for card edge connector fingers plated over a nickel underlayment.

  • Gold can be ordered in conjunction with all the other surface finishes available from Sunstone Circuits.
  • To aid in the insertion of parts you can request a bevel to be added to the edge.  Sunstone offers a variety of choices.  Online select from 15º, 30º or 45º

 There are several advantages to using Hard Gold compared to other surface finishes for the usability of untreated contact surfaces such as contact points or membrane switches.

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