Reliable electrical connections that meet the precision, safety, and performance demands of medical technology
Medical devices require high-performance electrical and electronic components that operate safely, reliably, and consistently — often in demanding clinical environments. At SM Contact, we deliver advanced connector technologies engineered for the unique requirements of medical equipment, ensuring stable electrical performance, long service life, and compliance with stringent quality standards.
Infusion pumps, patient monitors, ventilators, syringe pumps, portable diagnostic devices — SM Contact names healthcare, alongside automotive, as one of the two industries where a connection failure isn’t a warranty claim, it’s a patient-safety event. That changes what “reliable” has to mean for a joint inside the device.
Connectors in Medical Devices
- Infusion and syringe pump motor and actuator terminations — splice crimping
- Patient monitor and diagnostic device PCB stacks — pin insertion, press-fit
- Portable and wearable monitoring electronics — pin insertion into compact PCB footprints
- Ventilator and therapy-unit motor and control wiring — splice crimping, press-fit
- Dental and cosmetic instrument electronics — pin insertion
SM Contact Connector Technologies for Medical Applications
SM Contact offers a comprehensive range of connector and contact technologies that support the critical needs of medical devices, including:
What a medical-device connection has to survive
- Repeated sterilization, not one production cycle. A reusable probe, monitor cable, or therapy unit goes through autoclave steam cycles (typically 121–134°C), EtO gas, or repeated disinfectant wipe-downs for its entire service life. Flux residue from a soldered joint gives moisture and chemicals somewhere to sit and degrade the connection from the inside; a solderless joint has no flux to leave behind.
- The safety standard assumes contact with the patient. IEC 60601-1 requires two independent means of protection — 2 MOPP for anything touching the patient, 2 MOOP for the operator — through higher clearance and creepage distances and lower leakage current. That’s a system-level requirement, but it starts with every joint in the current path holding stable, predictable contact resistance instead of drifting.
- Vibration testing has real numbers attached. IEC 60601-1-11 specifies shock testing at 150 m/s² for 11 ms (half-sine, 3 shocks per axis) and broadband random vibration from 10 Hz to 2000 Hz — relevant to anything with an integrated pump or blower motor: infusion sets, syringe drivers, ventilators. A soldered joint fatigues under that load; a crimped or press-fit one deforms elastically instead.
- Portable and wearable devices don’t have room for a full connector shell. Header pins and board-to-board or wire-to-board pins are increasingly how the industry connects compact monitoring and diagnostic electronics — the connection has to fit inside the PCB footprint, not add a housing around it.
Connectors for micro coils in medical devices
A patented insulation-displacement pin that connects directly into enamelled magnet wire — no stripping the coil first, no heat anywhere near the winding. That matters most exactly where the wire gets hardest to strip by hand without breaking it: micro-coils for hearing-aid actuators, micro-solenoids, and the small sensor and feedback coils built into compact diagnostic and monitoring devices. The pin’s footprint sits inside the coil bobbin itself rather than adding a housing around it, so it fits the same space constraint micro-coil designs are already built around.
Documentation for Medical Connectors
A connection design for a medical OEM doesn’t ship without the paperwork behind it. SM Contact’s engineering process — pin or splice parameter definition, tooling design, insertion simulation, and lab validation of press-in and pull-out force and contact resistance — produces the qualification data medical device manufacturers need for their own ISO 13485 design files and risk documentation, before a single unit goes into production.