Originally Posted by
pdlamb
A guy who worked at Boeing told me one time they had to plan around 9 month lead time for fancy connectors, even though they found them in a catalog. Helps explain why it takes so long to build planes and spacecraft!
a few decades ago, I used to design electronics for aircraft at McDonnell Douglas, and had the same experience. When we started a new project, our first task was to get the connectors on order. Of course, these are very expensive connectors and there are a ton of options in terms of the number of pins, arrangement and type of pins, finish, etc., so they are only produced once the order is placed. The one I'm thinking of is the main connector for the black box, so it's not like a small flex strip connector. Still, it cost around $400, I think. This was for the C-17 cargo plane, and the original expected production run of the C-17 was around 400 aircraft. As such, there are few benefits from streamlining the production process, like there are for high volume products such as cars.
But... the little connector on this Wahoo looks like a relatively standard sort of item.
Steve in Peoria