ZIF sockets

[Olaf Iwert]

Posted to CCD-world:
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Sorry ZIF socket opponents,

Too may things to do. I wanted to write already earlier.

However I take Roger's EMail as a starting point for my comments
(thanks Roger).

Here at ESO we have in almost ALL of our dewars been using ZIF sockets
of various kinds. 
We partially also designed our own, or went for quite numerous and
tidious modifications of commercial available ones.
This kept us busy for a while as you have to invest quite some design
hours to get things right given the requirements in mechanics,
board layout, thermal load etc.
In addition the modification to commercial available ones must be such
that you still have a reliable electrical contact under all
circumstances. This can be the tough part, but after all you get the
experience after a while.

In summary my points are that I would NOT trust a low insertion force
socket in the cold in the vacuum connected to a CCD. This being
supported now by Roger's EMail, as he mentioned that they were
separating !

In the contrary I would really like to state that we have NOT found
problems with outgassing or water vapur with these ZIF sockets. This
being underlined by the fact that we have really huge amounts of
socket material inside the dewar for TK2048 or right now for a big
mosaic of CCDs.

In additoin this is NOT the cheap solution - however what are a couple
of $'s compared to the cost of the CCD, our labour time to get things 
running with (often enough) a world unique CCD (e.g. Lesser treatment)
????

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  Olaf Iwert                        E-mail :               oiwert at eso.org  
  European Southern Observatory     Phone & Voice Mail :   +49-89-3200-6353  
  Optical Detector Lab              FAX :                  +49-89-3200-6358
  Karl-Schwarzschild-Str 2
  85748 Garching
  GERMANY                         
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