I have a PCB chip which requires a Molex 52991-0208 for it to connect to in order to access the pins on the PCB chip. I want to wire up my breadboard to interface with this PCB. I therefore need a Molex 52991-0208 which is the female connection. The pins on the 52991-0208 are way too small to solder or to connect to anything I can handle. How do I connect the molex 52991-0208 to something I can use? Do they make Molex adapters that wll take the 52991-0208 and convert the pins into something I can plug into a breadboard, or reasonably solder?

 

You will have to make a PCB to solder the connector onto and lead the traces to pads fo wires. If your board runs at any frequency, the connection to a breadboard may not give reliable results.

Surface mount and breadboards are pretty iffy.

 

Are there any good atricles or techniques for soldering such a small connector to a PCB? The task seems virtually impossible to me to solder such small connections. The tip of my soldering iron is probably as thick as 3 pins on the molex connector. Would I be better off getting a Gerber file and ordering a customer PCB?

 

That gets down to time and money. If you can afford the custom work, or is you want to get a smaller tip (or hot air system) and learn to solder fine pitch stuff.

See what some other members have to say.

 

Standard spacing for DIPs, etc is 2.54mm. Those pins are 0.5mm on center, or less than 1/5 of DIP spacing. Trying to use a standard chisel-tip iron will be like attempting an appendectomy on a fruit fly using a telephone pole.

Usually, these kinds of things are soldered using infrared, forced-air heat, or ovens. Many hobbiests have had successes using toaster ovens to reflow the solder. It will take practice to get decent results. Google is your friend here.

 

I have a PCB chip which requires a Molex 52991-0208 for it to connect to in order to access the pins on the PCB chip. I want to wire up my breadboard to interface with this PCB. I therefore need a Molex 52991-0208 which is the female connection. The pins on the 52991-0208 are way too small to solder or to connect to anything I can handle. How do I connect the molex 52991-0208 to something I can use? Do they make Molex adapters that wll take the 52991-0208 and convert the pins into something I can plug into a breadboard, or reasonably solder?

You will need to make an adapter board.

I hand solder a 30 pin version of this style connector. You will need a fine tip soldering
iron to hand solder this part. I usually (1) solder one pin on the end, (2) solder one
pin on the other end, (3) solder the end tabs and (4) solder the middle pins.
Cleanup the solder bridges with solderwick.

See my tool hints at http://tinyurl.com/5foeou

(* jcl *)