PCB SMA antenna connector

[camerart]

Hi,
Can anyone point me to the footprint for a PCB edge connector for SMA antennas please?
Like the one on this PC
C.

[paulvdh]

Something like this:

Also, from your profile:

which shows you are on this forum almost two years longer then I am (2026-12-28). I guess it’s about time to learn how to modify and make footprints in KiCad. The editor for it is quite good.

[3Dogs]

That isn’t SMA, it’s UFL

[camerart]

Hi P,
The top one is the one I was looking for, thanks.

I’ve made footprints in the past, those two years longer than you are long enough to forget
C

[mousey]

Be careful ! as a friend of mine was using an 'edge connected ’ SMA footprint and when he got the PCB made the 3 pads where to big for the standard Chinese connectors that are used all over the place. I had a look in Kicad library and there are 3 types of edge connectors and the one my friend used was the first one, the actual one he needed was the one below with slightly smaller pads. I’m not sure of you application but I do recommend measuring the pads (Kicad ruler) and double checking you dimensions…just to be sure

[camerart]

Hi M,
Yes, I’ve made those mistakes!

What I normally do is to try my best effort, then change things as I find them, then print it all out on paper, and line up each component, to make sure it’s correct, before etching it.
Thanks,
C.

[paulvdh]

Connectors are especially troublesome. There is no standard at all of how they fit on a PCB. It’s for example common for chinese outlets to sell assortments of USB connectors, meant for repairing phones, and then you can have a box with 100 different connectors, and each of them requires a different PCB footprint. For connectors I strongly prefer to have to actual connector in house for test fitting before PCB’s are being manufactured.

[camerart]

Hi P,
Why so many? There’s only 4x contacts.

From previous advice, I may use coax connected nearer to the chip.

C.

[paulvdh]

@camerart

Why so many? There’s only 4x contacts.

I’m not sure. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose just to make phones harder to repair. If you none of the available 50ct connectors fit on the PCB, then you are forced to buy the EUR20 connector from your phone manufacturer to be able to repair your phone.

And then a year or two later, you can buy a 50ct connector that also fits, but the phone manfacturer has devised yet another connector model for their newest phone. And a lot of different manufacturers do this.

---

But there are also lots of other possible reasons. Sometimes connectors turn out to be not very strong, and a slightly revised model is designed. Or there is some reliability problem in the factory.

But it’s not only USB connectors. For example the good old D-Sub connectors used to be quite big “behind” the mounting surface. And then, when the first laptops came out, the Sub-D connectors became ever narrower.

But the most important part to remember is that there is no reliable standard for connectors and you have to be very careful when designing a PCB footprint for a connector. In some lesser amount this is also true for IC’s. Some SO packages may be manufactured with either a 0.6mm or a 0.65mm pitch. The difference is too small to see, but just big enough that it won’t fit on the footprint when an IC has a long row of such pins. And there are lots of other small gotcha’s too.