In March 2024, a purchase request landed in my inbox and stopped me cold. One of our project engineers needed "circular connectors" and a "117 multimeter." I could source office chairs and label printers without thinking, but electrical parts? Not my world. I didn't even know if TE Connectivity was a corp, a division, or a brand.
I asked the engineer to explain. He gave me one of those patient looks and said: "Connectors are what let you unplug a cable without cutting wires." I wrote that down, still not completely sure I understood. Then I started looking.
The request that made me ask, "What are connectors?"
The request form had "TE Connectivity, Corp." hand-written in the notes. That didn't help. I'd heard of Tyco Electronics, but not TE Connectivity. Turns out they're related—actually the same company with a newer name. The engineer said that was normal in that industry: companies rebrand but keep the old part numbers alive.
I started by searching for "te connectivity website." I found te.com and expected a slow, brochure-style corporate site. Instead, I got a proper part search. I typed the connector part number from the request, and it came up with a datasheet, a product drawing, and a life-cycle status that said "Active." That was a good sign.
I honestly didn't need to call the TE Connectivity corporate office. I had searched for "te connectivity corporate office" at the start, mostly to see if there was a phone number for questions. The page gave me a contact form and a distributor locator. That was enough.
The 117 multimeter side quest
The second item on the request was a 117 multimeter. TE doesn't make those, as far as I can tell. It's a general-purpose test meter you can buy from electrical distributors. I found two options: a known local distributor and an online discount store that was about $60 cheaper.
I went back and forth for a day. The discount store had good reviews, but the local distributor answered the phone and promised a calibration certificate. In the end, the $60 saving wasn't worth the chance that a bad meter would give us a wrong reading on live equipment. I ordered from the distributor. That decision felt boring, and boring was fine.
While I waited for the quote, I went back to the TE connectivity website and started reading about the connector itself. This brings me to the actual question: what are connectors?
So, what are connectors?
A connector is an electromechanical component that joins two electrical circuits. You plug one half into the other, it clicks, and current can flow. Unplug it and the circuit opens. That's the simple version. The more specific version involves material composition, voltage ratings, IP ratings, and crimp tooling—none of which I pretend to be an expert in.
If you're not an engineer, here's what matters from a buyer's perspective: connectors are not one-size-fits-all. The circular connector on that request came in maybe a dozen variations: different pin counts, different keying, different wire gauges. The exact part number had to match the application. That's why I stopped guessing and started using the search tools on the website.
I'm not an electrical engineer, so I can't explain why one pin configuration is better than another. What I can tell you is that the datasheet will show you. The TE site lets you open a PDF directly, without a login, which is how I found the mechanical drawing my engineer needed.
Everything I'd read about component sourcing suggested you need a distributor sales rep just to get basic specs. In practice, I got the datasheet, the drawing, and a quote request form in under an hour. Maybe that's not unusual for TE, but it felt unusual to me.
The twist: the connector was the cheap part
The quote came back faster than I expected. The connector itself was under $5 each. Then I saw the tooling line: a crimp tool for the contacts, an insertion tool, and a removal tool. That line was more than 20 times the cost of the connectors. My first thought was that someone had made a mistake.
No one had made a mistake. Crimp tools are precision tools. They're expensive because they have to make the same reliable connection thousands of times. I hadn't thought about tooling at all. The engineer had, thankfully.
That's where I connected the transparency lesson. The website listed the tooling as a related part. If a supplier hides the tooling until after you've approved the connector unit price, you end up with a nasty budget surprise. If you see it up front, you can ask for a combined quote. I've learned to ask "what's NOT included" before "what's the price." This was the same idea, in part-number form.
To be fair, a good distributor would probably have flagged the tooling too. And some might argue you don't always need the official tool for one small batch—there are cheaper generic options. But for our project, the engineer wanted consistency, and consistency has a cost.
What I'd tell another office administrator
If you're an admin like me and a request like this crosses your desk, don't panic. Ask the engineer what the part does. Then search for the part number on the official site. If the part has an "Active" lifecycle status, you're off to a good start.
The te-connectivity spelling in some old emails might look intimidating, but the website is genuinely useful. I didn't need to call the TE Connectivity corporate office for a catalog. I found the catalog, the datasheet, and the related tooling without a single phone call.
Honestly, I still don't understand why a tiny connector needs a $400 tool to install it. If someone has a theory, I'd love to hear it. But I don't need to understand the physics to understand the budget. The part was transparent, and the total picture was transparent. If you ask me, that's the right way for an industrial supplier to run a website.
Connectors connect things. Good suppliers connect the dots.