18-Pin DIP IC Socket Adaptor (0.300" Narrow Body - Through-Hole)

When your custom printed circuit board relies on standard 18-pin integrated circuits—such as the ubiquitous ULN2803 Darlington transistor array, the LM3914 LED dot/bar display driver, or classic PIC microcontrollers like the PIC16F628A—the 18-Pin DIP IC Socket is a crucial addition to your board design. Instead of soldering your sensitive silicon directly to the PCB and risking fatal thermal damage from your soldering iron, you permanently mount this rugged, heat-resistant thermoplastic socket in its place. Once the board is fully assembled and washed, you simply press your pristine IC into the socket's tensioned metallic contacts.

Beyond acting as a thermal shield during assembly, this socket makes hardware debugging and field repairs virtually instantaneous. 18-pin chips like the ULN2803 are frequently used as high-current buffers to drive external mechanical relays or stepper motors. Because they act as the physical intermediary handling high inductive loads, they are highly susceptible to burning out if a flyback diode fails. With a socket in place, you do not need to desolder 18 delicate pins to resurrect the board; you just pry out the burnt chip and snap a fresh $1 replacement directly into the socket.

Key Features & Functional Advantages:

• Zero-Heat Installation: Completely isolates your integrated circuits from the destructive heat of manual hand-soldering, wave-soldering, and hot-air rework stations.

• Instantaneous Chip Swapping: Allows for immediate replacement of damaged high-current driver chips or rapid swapping of microcontrollers during iterative firmware testing.

• Standardized 0.1" Pitch: The pins are perfectly spaced at 2.54mm (0.1 inches) apart, dropping flawlessly into standard perfboards, stripboards, and solderless breadboards.

• 0.300" Row Spacing: Specifically sized for the standard "narrow body" 18-pin footprint utilized by the vast majority of 18-pin DIP logic and driver ICs.

• Dual-Wipe Contacts: Features tensioned, dual-leaf metallic springs inside each pin slot that aggressively grip the flat legs of the IC, ensuring a highly reliable, low-resistance electrical connection even under vibration.

Perfect For:

• Custom Relay & Motor Boards: The mandatory physical mount for ULN2803 Darlington arrays used to safely drive 12V mechanical relays and unipolar stepper motors from a standard 3.3V or 5V microcontroller.

• Audio & Battery Level Meters: Provides a safe, reusable housing for LM3914/LM3915 analog display drivers when building custom LED bar graph readouts for power supplies or audio amplifiers.

• PIC Microcontroller Prototyping: An excellent, secure mount for classic 18-pin PIC microcontrollers during breadboard to perfboard transitions.

• Educational Prototyping: Ensures that students can safely insert, remove, and reuse driver components without requiring advanced desoldering wick or solder suckers.

Technical Specifications:

• Pin Count: 18 Pins (2 rows of 9)

• Pin Pitch (Spacing between adjacent pins): 2.54 mm (0.1")

• Row Spacing (Distance between the two rows): 7.62 mm (0.300" - Narrow Body)

• Mounting Type: Through-Hole (PTH)

• Contact Style: Dual-Wipe / Leaf Spring (Standard)

• Housing Material: Black Thermoplastic (UL94V-0 Rated)

• Contact Material: Tin-plated Phosphor Bronze

• IC Compatibility: Any standard 18-pin, 0.300" wide DIP integrated circuit.

Ensure your order is placed by 2PM to guarantee next-day delivery! Our commitment to prompt service includes a 24-hour delivery system through our network of carriers, aimed at ensuring your package arrives right on schedule.

Please note, a delivery fee of €4.99 applies for orders under €50. For those in remote areas, be aware that our couriers may apply an extra surcharge. This additional fee helps cover the costs of transporting your items to harder-to-reach locations.