EONEWS: What are your opinions regarding the major trends for this market (slowing, growing, booming…)?
VOJACEK: Although numerous, wire-to-board (WTB) connectors are still basic and can fall to meet cross-market demand for smaller, lighter, more versatile, and more affordable solutions. Despite of price pressure, we can expect WTB connectors will have growing trend on the market.
EONEWS: What are the key strategies adopted by your company in the short/medium period to address (or to better address) the needs of the market?
VOJACEK: Many new connectors today lack the innovation needed to meet the needs of design engineers. In 2012, AVX team of experts at a leading global connector manufacturer collaborated to design and build a WTB connector systém that could satisfy the size, cost , and configuration requirements faced by today´s electronic design engineers. Marketly different from existing products, the innovative solution is, technically speaking, not even a connector.Existing connectors are comprised of two components: a contact system and an insulator.
The contact system is the heart of a connector; the insulator, a plastic component that provides protection and support – but it also adds cost.The insulator provided the team with a perfect opportunity to significantly reduce the size and cost of the connector without compromising electrical or mechanical performance. All they had to do was create a contact capable of satisfying all of the performance requirements of standard connectors with regard to robustness, reliability, simplicity, and easy of use in an unprotected, insulator-less environment.
EONEWS: What are you doing in order to implement your strategies (partnership/agreements, new acquisitions, investments in activities like R&D, people….)?
VOJACEK: As the result of our design activity, AVX was awarded winning 9296 single contact family as Product of the Year 2013. From thousands of new products introduced last year, Electronic Products Magazine selected this contact system based on its significant advancement in technology and innovation.
AVX is promoting this new Single Contact Technology through their franchised Distributors network or directly at customers through Sales network.
EONEWS: What are the most important application?
VOJACEK: AVX is well know as producer of connectors for lighting market. But additional applications for the 9296 Series include: smart grid meters, breakers, and panels; SSL/LED bulbs, fixtures, signage, and streetlights; machine controls, including motors, drives, solenoids, sensors, fans, and pumps; and commercial building controls, such as fire and security sensors.
EONEWS: Which are the key factors that set your company apart from the competition?
VOJACEK: Single Contact Technology could replace the hard soldering of wires to a PCB, which, although cost effective, requires additional labour costs and is not a repeatable manufacturing proces. They could replace traditional two-pieces connector systems, enabling reductions in both cost and component count. And, they could also replace traditional terminal block style connectors, enabling: mix-and-match contact selection and placement based on AWQ, current, and voltage specifications; pick-and-place SMT automated processing; and increased ease of use, insertion, and removal.
AVX has received extensive Underwriter Laboratory (UL) certifications for uninsulated single contacts in industrial applications. Validating AVX’s assertion that its broad range of uninsulated single contacts provides full connector performance without the added expense of the insulator and its associated assembly costs.
UL certification is a major milestone in the industry-wide acceptance of these leading-edge connector solutions. As testimony to the electrical and mechanical performance characteristics that our several uninsulated contact series exhibit, our latest UL certifications successfully eliminate the largest barrier between these technology-leading, cost-effective connector solutions and the American electronics industry
EONEWS: And in the middle/long term (if you have a crystal ball!)?
VOJACEK: It would be simple with crystal ball. But we believe we are on the right way with our current strategy. We are listening to customers and demand from the market. AVX design engineering team is flexible with adding new design solutions to existing product range, to satisfy customer requests for future projects.