I always worry about breaking the power connector with a laptop that has a hard cable sticking out of it, especially usb c.
How about a mag safe style connector and matching expansion adapter?
Not unlike Apple’s latest magsafe connector on a macbook.
at least, with what you provide, its easy to replace if broken.
Hello @John_Windberg,
Welcome to the community. This question has been asked several times. A quick search will bring up some discussions. While it may seem simple there are lots of things to consider with a “quick disconnect” using magnetic connectors.
Framework has a similar approach with the USBC connector; additionally, say the female connector is damaged…an inexpensive expansion card is readily available and there are multiple slots to power/charge the laptop. Best of all you do not need a proprietary charger or cable to power/charge the laptop like Apple and other vendors in the past.
Enjoy your Framework!
To elaborate on this for the uninitiated, you’ll be hard pressed to find reliable USB-C magnetic connectors that can pass more than 40W and last more than a few dozen connect/disconnect cycles.
Trust me, I’ve spent literally years on this endeavor…the hunt for the perfect magnetic USB-C middleman to protect my many expensive electronics. The best I ever found was from a company called “Hogore” and they have become impossible to find in recent years - the product listings for the ones I use are long gone. They topped out at 100W but have a fairly bulky right-angle connector to accommodate that power. They have proven super reliable, but I’m stuck with the half dozen I already have and capped at 100W max, as the spec has continued to evolve to support more than double that. Sure, that’s plenty for most of us FW users and I use one on my FW because I frequently get up and move to different rooms while working from home; I like the convenience more than anything. However, despite being rated 100W, these adapters still get quite hot at anything above 60W.
This illustrates one of the biggest hurdles of magnetic connectors for high power transfer: That “soft” connection introduces resistance that results in heat buildup at the connector. To overcome this, the conductors of that adapter need to be larger to carry the power safely. You either end up with a smaller connector with smaller conductors that can’t carry as much power [safely], or a much larger connection than convenience or device dimensions will allow for. My Hogore magnetic connectors use a pogo pinset that is 13mm long and nearly 3mm wide (NOT including the magnets surrounding them), hence using a right-angle design to accommodate the bulk.
That said, I’ve been searching for about a year now for a replacement option for my aging Hogore adapters and have yet to find something worthwhile; something that can carry modern current and data speeds (at least 100W and USB 3.1 speeds) with a strong magnet (since high current/speed cables are heavy) and long lifespan. I’ve purchased, tested, and subsequently returned about 2 dozen brands of adapters with exactly zero promising results. They are all trash.
If you can find such a connector - one that will continue to be produced for years to come (vs these fly-by-night brands that vanish in 6 months), it would be quite trivial to whip up a custom expansion case design to accommodate it. I thought about making myself one for a Hogore adapter, but the work isn’t worth the time for a single connector for myself. haha
Some pics of my current adapters to illustrate what I’m talking about. This was the only design that proved reliable enough for daily use. I bought them nearly 5 years ago now…
