HI Theo

I use diamond hole drills for glass-work.
They consist of a hollow tube, with diamonds bonded to the
'business end' of the tube.

Might it be possible to use one of these as a sort of 'auto-file' -
just to grind off the corners from your square pins ?

When used on glass, they need water-cooling -
don't know if they'd need that for metal-cutting.

Alternatively, can you find somebody who can drill a 1mm hole into the
end of a dremel-style mounted abrasive drum - that you can use to
re-form the end of the mains socket pins.

Don't know what the effect might be of removing material from the pins -
they might be plated to aid solderability, so you'd need to know that
whatever's under the plating will solder OK - also that you're not
affecting the current capacity of the socket (are there approvals
issues, perhaps ?)

Regards
Adrian

On 18/04/2011 18:32, Theo Markettos wrote:
We've just received some PCBs back from fab, and there's a problem. The
boards have an PC motherboard-style power connector which is to take a
significant current (10A or so). The footprint will take either a
straight-through or a right-angle connector, and was prototyped with the
straight-through version which have flat pins. The holes are
plated-through, and the plating is electrically necessary.

We need to use right-angled versions. The only R/A connector available has
square pins. Our holes are the same diameter, but round. D'oh.

So how might I go about making a large number of square pins fit in round
holes? There's hundreds of pins to do, and a PCB respin is awkward. It's a
tight enough fit that simply hammering it in isn't going to be a great idea,
and filing the holes out is a no-no because of the plating. Filing the pins
with a flat file is going to be hard work (especially since they're quite
close together and can't be removed from the connector).

I did wonder about getting a die to cut a thread on the end of each pin (ie
make it round), but 1mm diameter dies don't seem to be easily available. Is
there something similar around?

Any other ideas?

Thanks
Theo