D-Shell Connector Cutouts

We have made many hundreds of different panels of all shapes, sizes and materials, and it is our experience that after round holes and rectangles, the plain old 9 pin D-shell connector is the most common shape that we create, and the one that seems to most concern our customers. These days is seems not be used so much for RS232 and MDA/VGA connections which brought them into popularity, as for a whole variety of custom applications. The connectors and their tools are readily available, inexpensive, and everyone is familiar using the connector which it what continues to make them an attractive option for hardware designers.

In the table below we provide design files for your D-shell connectors: we have tested these and know them to provide a good fit for a male/female connection.

If you want to create a professional looking panel, especially if it's a product that you are selling, it is very hard to create a nice clean D-shell cutout without special tools, and if you try to do it yourself, well, it may very well look like you did. We accurately CNC cut all of these cutouts, and they will add value to the appearance and function of your panels.

	DXF file for the 9 pin D-shell connector cutout as shown here: Click Here.
	This is small panel cutout with a female 9 pin D-shell connector in place. Notice that there is a small gap between the connector and the cutout.
	This picture shows a male 9 pin D-shell connector partially engaged over the female connector shown above. Notice in this picture that the small gap between the female connector and the panel cutout leaves space for the male connector to fit down over the female connector. We have had customers provide cutouts that fit snuggly over the female connector only to find that when they assembly their hardware the male connectors will not press down fully over the female.
	This picture shows the male connector fully engaged over the 9 pin female D-shell connector.
	This picture shows the suggested matching overlay cutout for a 9 pin D-shell. In this example, the cutout for the two mounting holes has been combined with the main D-shell shape. This is not always necessary, and we can cut the overlay with separate mounting holes, but the overlay between the holes and D cutout is very thin. Creating the cutout shape with Adobe Illustrator can also be a bit of problem because the newer versions to not seem to properly load paths from dxf format files. We provide a full scale Illustrator file that you can use for your panel artwork below: 9 pin D-shell shape for Illustrator (Version 10, will work with others).

You can use the same 9 pin D shell cutout for both a male and female connector because the engaged fit is the same regardless of which connector is actually mounted to the panel.