Dud Deans?
 

Anyone experienced a dud/non-connecting/shorted Deans connector? And I'm talking about genuine Deans.

I had to replace a female Deans on a customer's battery I recently modified because both our chargers could not detect a battery. I replaced the Deans connector and it charged fine.

BUH?! I've NEVER seen a bad deans connector, but I guess it's possible? It's pretty simple, two blocks of metal in a plastic case.

It seems more likely the link (solder) was bad somehow.

Nope, tried to resolder it and no dice.

I've never seen that before. Could be due to the surface of the connector corroded with carbon or some other residue. Try going over the ends with a brass wire brush. But I guess you can't do that with the female end.

Use a wire brush as HKGhost said. Sometimes the Deans connector will have a patina, that may or may not affect the connection from one end to another. A light acid will also work, dip the connector ends in and take them out then neutralize with any base such as vinegar.

Vinegar = 5% acetic acid = not a base... baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is.

Current conducting surfaces on Deans connectors are gold plated. Vinegar won't do a damn thing against them. However, you could rust out the spring plate on the male connector with acid exposure, or most likely get a nice green patina on inside your copper wire strands soldered to the connector terminals.

In diagnosing connection problems, my first troubleshooting approach is to try to bypass the connection with an alligator clip that I've soldered together myself (some are crimped).

I doubt that your connector has failed. I would check for fatigue failure of conductors in your wires at your connector ends. As much as I like Deans connectors for their current capacity and compact form, they do little to strain relieve wires connected to them. You might have also lost the spring plate on your male connector end which would not provide reliable contact.

In response to your last paragraph, I de-soldered the connector and tried the battery wires directly into my smart charger jaws, and it worked. Soldered another deans on, and it worked fine.

Did you try putting that old (possibly defective) connector back on? Does it work?

I resoldered it once and it still didn't work, so I replaced it.

Well, I guess if it looks like sh*t and it smells like sh*t, it must be sh*t.

I've never seen a failed Deans connector before. I've seen some crummy copies with thermoplastic bodies that melted during soldering, or clones with spring plates that yielded, but never a failed Deans. I didn't think they ever died in airsoft with our low current draws.

In 20 years of using them I'm never seen one fail because of the conector it's self? But I have seen a cold solder joint have the same issue. But if you'v tryed re-solding it and it's still the same then yeh it sounds like a dud. It happens! As long as it's not one of thoes knock-off one s that G&P has,thoes are shit and I'v seen alot of issues with them.

Take that Dean's connector and heat one terminal for a good 10 seconds... the red plastic will turn brown, almost black.

Fake Dean's look a lot like the real ones, but the plastic will melt before darkening.

They're real, trust me.

I don't know if I can trust a Waaaaaaah wahhhhhhhh face.

I have worked with them since the 80's (old style Deans), and never had one fail. It's a solid piece of metal...anything that could go wrong would be a solder/wire, or corrosion problem. The corrosion could be due to many things, but due to the quality of the connector can usually be cleaned or fixed somehow.

There's about a dozen different manufacturers of deans connectors, all of which differ slightly in size.
I've seen deans that were a whole 1mm oversize and didnt work with any other deans.
What I do to get more reliable contact for testing and charging customer guns/batteries is bend a curve on all my deans, insuring they always make contact.

There's only one manufacturer of Deans connectors. There are crummy clones, but there is only one Deans connector.

Bending a curve in the contacts isn't necessary or beneficial. The spring plate assures firm contact and flat plates provide large area contact. Warped plates would give line or point contact which wouldn't have as good a current capacity as flat plates pressed together. If you have to improve contact pressure in a clone connector, try bending the spring plate to increase the preload force.

Put a multimeter on it. It will show continuity since it's a solid piece of metal from one end to another. If there was a break in one of the contacts, it would have to be cut. Clamp it in a vice and heat one side up while pulling on the other. Half should slide out as the plastic melts if it's broken which is highly improbable. As madmax said, it's either the solder joint is poor or there is no load in the spring to make a solid contact.

It's not the spring, it's a female like I said in my first post.
And it's not the solder joint either.

so if it's the female, an under powered soldering iron was used or a proper one was used improperly heating to the point the plastic melted and the contact shifted.

It is not the connector that failed. It was user error! Go ahead and put that multimeter on it and test for continuity before continuing with this complaint that a connector failed! The plastic block melted. Plain and simple.

No it's not melted. And even if it was slightly melted it would still have a connection.
Also I don't have a multimeter.

I haven't even looked at it again but maybe I will today or tomorrow.

And it's two solid blocks of metal, this doesn't make sense.

I also had this problem with a genuine Dean's connector. And no, like Styrak, I did not melt the insulator. The problem turned out to be a loose connector and connector slot in the female Dean's plug. It would not work reliably with other genuine Dean's or with my 2 different kinds of clones. Both of which have been tested by myself and all 3 work well together.

If I took a small splinter of wood and wedged it in behind the connector and pushed it physically into the connector slot then I could make it work somewhat. Like Styrak I ended up discarding the very expensive connector and replacing it with another at my cost. I have since ordered more of the clones (the ones that are actually gold plated) and I am recommending them to my customers as "best bang for the buck".


I am still carrying genuine Dean's for those customers who demand brand name everything, but for those on a budget the clones are great. Their drawback is a lower melting point of the insulator. Care must be taken not to overheat the insulator when soldering the connection.

the melting isn't always going to be visible. since the metal blocks run through the inside, it would melt from the inside around the metal first. must have been just enough to not mate at all with the male end.

I had an intermittent problem with "connection break" on my charger...I had charged LOTS of different batteries with all types of connectors previously over time.

I had made up a series of adaptors from the charger...+/- bullet plugs in the charger to Deans male...deans female to large...large to small. I'd just resort to whatever plug in the sequence that I needed for whatever battery.

When I had the odd connection break issue I couldn't figure it out...battery looked good, battery connectors looked good (I had just cut off the tamiya and put on a deans)...multimeter check on the batt was ok.

Turned out one of the connections on the charger's deans plug had come loose...probably from me pulling on it (I wish the plugs had a little pull loop on them). Not so loose as to fully disconnect...the shrink wrap was holding it connected (enough) in most positions...but when I hooked up in a certain position on the table I'd get a connection break. Quick resolder of the charger end and it was all good.

I've also had issues before with the wires just after the Deans corroding/breaking. On one of the last ones I saw the deans solder was good...but just behind it in the shielding the wiring was corroded and several strands were broken. A good tug and the remaining wires snapped. I suspect that water/etc had gotten in and corroded the wires. Not visible from the outside as it was sort of shrink wrapped and taped.

Another one I had was where a connector in a pack was loose. The shrinkwrap/packaging would sort of hold the connection...but there was a definite break in the pack if it was stressed the right way.

So...if it's a goofy electrical issue...go back to basics. Charger...battery...wiring harness. Personnaly I find it easier to bin a gremlin battery pack or to simply rewire a mechbox than it is to pin down a phantom electrical break.

Yeah this connector is going in the garbage. Might investigate first though just because it's interesting.

The other issue is when people overheat the connector when soldering on the leads.
This causes the material to melt around the pin inside the connector, it typically runs over the pin on it's edges, causing interference between the two connectors when you put them together.
Make sure there isn't any molten plastic buildup on the edges of the inside of the connector.

And modify makes oversize deans connectors. I bought a huge pack of real brand deans, and they are absolutely not interchangeable with the modify connectors.