Making Cables – Part 4 – Dupont Male to 2 Female

Now that I’ve gone through the first two articles (9V Snap and USB Powered) I don’t think that there is much that I can add to the conversation, really. Follow the directions in the 9V Snap article for preparing the multi-strand wire and connector directions. Remembering that you need to use Male DuPont connectors for the supply end of the cable.

There are no differences in the way that the DuPont connectors are soldered, nor are there any differences in the way that the 2 Pin Housing is used.

The main thing here is that I have a single wire splitting into 2 wires  at the junction point and then shrink tube goes over the join.

At the end of the wire where there are two black and two red lines, these get a Female (4 in total) connector. At the other end of the cable, solder in two Male connectors. Once again, slip the shrink tube over the lines and then slide one red and one black line into the housing so that you end up with a single 2 pin block at the male end and two 2 pin blocks at the male end.

When connecting the double wire to the single wire, I first soldered the two red wires together in a “V” configuration and then wound the single red wire around the double to make the “Y” connection. And then the same for the black wires. The shrink tube then slides over the join so that there aren’t any exposed wires anywhere. Making use of the Third Hand tool to hold the wires while I soldered them together was very useful.

It really is as simple as that.

You can use your multimeter to perform a continuity test by placing one probe on the positive male connector and then touching the other probe onto the exposed loop on the positive female end. Change over to the negative and then test the negative female ends.

With the male end connected to power, you can also run a power check to see if there is any significant voltage drop across the cable, which you might get if the overall cable length is too long. My cable is about 15cm long and I get no appreciable voltage drop.

You could replace the Male DuPont connectors with female connectors if you want, it really depends on your application.

Another project that you could do is making a couple of adaptors. Male to Male, Female to Female so that you can connect to devices that require either male or female connections.