Samtec TSW 2.54mm Through-Hole Pin Header — Board-to-Board & Wire-to-Board Interconnect

The Samtec TSW series is a family of 2.54 mm (0.100") pitch through-hole pin headers. You use these when you need a reliable, solderable male header to mate with IDC ribbon connectors, female receptacles (like Samtec's own SSW, BSW, or CES series), or discrete wires terminated with crimp housings. The 2.54 mm pitch is the de facto standard for prototyping and production alike — it is the same grid you find on Arduino shields, Raspberry Pi HATs, and most breadboard-compatible breakout boards.

At 431 variants in this family, the TSW covers a lot of ground: single-row and dual-row, pin counts from 1 up to 36 (and beyond in special-order), straight and right-angle orientations, and multiple tail-length and plating options. These are unshrouded headers, which means they are lighter, cheaper, and take up less board real estate than boxed/shrouded headers — the trade-off being no polarization or keying. If your design needs reverse-polarity protection, you pair a TSW with a keyed housing or look at Samtec's shrouded TST/TSSH lines instead.

Typical Applications

• Embedded system interconnects: MCU boards, sensor breakout boards, and programmer/debugger headers (JTAG, SWD, ISP). The 2.54 mm pitch mates directly with standard 0.1" ribbon cable IDC connectors.
• Industrial control backplanes: TSW headers on daughtercards that plug vertically into a motherboard. You see this in PLC I/O modules, motor-drive stacks, and DIN-rail carrier boards where the through-hole solder joint handles vibration better than SMT.
• Test and measurement fixtures: Break-out boxes, logic analyzer pods, and bed-of-nails test jigs where you want pins you can clip oscilloscope probes onto.
• Prototyping add-on modules: GPS, LoRa, Bluetooth, and sensor modules designed on a 0.1" grid all use TSW-compatible headers to stack onto carrier boards.
• Cable-to-board in low-profile enclosures: Right-angle TSW variants let the cable exit parallel to the PCB, keeping the Z-height under 5 mm — useful when your enclosure lid clearance is tight.

Key Technical Specifications

How to Select a TSW Variant

1. Rows and pin count first: Are you carrying single-ended signals (1 row often enough) or differential pairs (2 rows for paired routing)? A 2×5 header with dual-row ribbon cable is tighter routing than two 1×5 headers side by side.
2. Orientation: Straight if the mating connector comes in from above. Right-angle if the cable must run horizontally — but check your PCB footprint; right-angle parts have a different hole pattern and need clearance behind the body.
3. Plating: Gold if the connection will be mated/unmated more than ~50 cycles (test jigs, programming headers you re-plug often) or if your environment is humid/sulfurous. Tin is fine for one-time assembly or low-cycle field connections and costs less.
4. Tail length: Short tails for single-sided PCB with components on the opposite side; extended tails for thicker boards (2.0 mm+) or when you need the solder joint on the same side as the header body. Samtec offers custom tail lengths for volume orders.
5. Mating partner: TSW mates with Samtec SSW (through-hole socket), BSW (bottom-entry), or any industry-standard 0.1" IDC socket. The mating height stack is roughly the TSW pin length above the insulator plus the receptacle height — verify your board-to-board gap before locking in the BOM.

TSW vs. Standard Economy Headers

Compared to generic no-name 0.1" breakaway headers you buy in strips: TSW pins are square-post phosphor bronze with controlled insertion/withdrawal force, not stamped brass. The insulator is glass-filled PBT rated UL 94V-0 — you can wave-solder or hand-solder without the body melting or deforming. Generic headers will soften or char past ~230°C on the plastic. The gold-plated variants give you spec-sheet traceable plating thickness, not "gold flash" that rubs off in 5 cycles. If your product ships to an industrial customer who expects a connector that does not go intermittent after two years in an unheated panel, the TSW earns its cost delta over the breakout strip.

Procurement Notes

Samtec ships TSW headers from stock on most standard configurations (1×1 through 2×36, tin or gold, straight). Right-angle and extended-tail variants may carry a 2-4 week lead time depending on volume. Samtec provides free samples for design validation — use their online sample request tool with a valid business email. For production quantities, pricing is competitive at 500+ pieces; the key cost driver is gold plating thickness (30 µ" is roughly 15-25% more than 10 µ" at mid-volume). 3D models (STEP/IGES) and PCB footprints are available directly from Samtec's part-number-specific product pages.