Etching and populating a board is childs play compared to finding connectors which link several components. but Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet] and his crew over at dangerous Prototypes have come up with a solution that makes us wonder why we haven’t seen this long ago? They’re prepping an any-size ribbon cable kit.
So lets say you do find the type of connector you want. You need to cut the ribbon cable to length, crimp on the connectors, then seat those connectors in the housing. We’ve done this many times, and being cheapskates we use needle-nose pliers instead of buying a proper crimper. This solution does away with that grunt work. The kit will ship several different lengths of ribbon wire with the connectors already placed by machine. This way you peel off the number of connectors you need, select the proper house size and plunk it in place. also in the kit are several lengths of male, female, and male/female jumper cables you can peel off in the same way.
Now what are we going to do with the rest of the spool of ribbon cable sitting in the workshop?