Yeah seriously: Why are JST connectors so scarce all the sudden? They're literally just some metal and plastic (Polycarbonate?). Unless there's a shortage of metal wire (cuz that's all it is; pressed into a squareish shape) or plastic why would the world be running out of JST XH (and other JST) connectors?
Are there serious bare wire and/or plastic shortages right now? I've read about price increases but not shortages.
Here at Big Electrical Equipment Manufacturer we are currently dealing with a cable shortage.
3 years ago, if I would have told the people working here that someday we would have a cable shortage, I would have been laughed out of the room.
My completely uninformed, wild guess: the manufacturing plants capable of creating those are creating other wires that are more in demand / profitable for them, rather than these cheap ones.
Do you mean vernacular term JST as in any little plastic PCB connector including all kinds of gray market fake clones or genuine JST components from JST the company?
Its a single supplier. JST is single company in Japan. I'm sure they're busy doing "stuff" and having fun trying to ship things.
Its like trying to buy Nichicon capacitors. There is one company in Japan making Nichicon capacitors. If they're busy, well, they're busy and you wait. There are zillions of "e-waste" reprocessors in China whom will desolder larger electrolytics from old PCBs, peel the plastic shrink, and apply a new shrink with all manner of trademarked names and temperature ratings to random e-waste pulls, including falsely labeled Nichicon. Those are the only two suppliers of Nichicon caps and if they're both busy or sold out you're outta luck.
Now if you're willing to change your BoM or if your safety regulator permits it and your company purchasing dept has a relationship with competitors and no single-sourcing agreement for better prices, you can use fantastic products from Chemi-con or Vishay or tens of serious competitors and hundreds of not-so-serious competitors.
Because you're doing stuff with JST XH I "know" you're doing something with modern RC vehicle batteries. I'm old, we played with RC cars in the 80s using Molex connectors and had the same problem as now, Molex is a single company and if they couldn't ship we didn't get connectors and that was the end of the discussion.
Full size car batteries are not licensed single source technology. Then again a lead post of a given diameter isn't very high tech. AFAIK there are no rechargeable battery pack connectors that are unlicensed at this time. FOSS type projects to issue a standard connector might arise, someday. Could implement 18650 individual cells and holders, those are unlicensed and not trademarked AFAIK but I have not verified that.
BTW JST connectors are extremely complicated not just wire and plastic. The posts are made with a cheap copper alloy, then plated with thick copper and plated again with tin, and the solder tabs are made the same way. I guess the PITA of a stage of pure copper plating is cheaper than paying for pure copper for the entire post. Copper is expen$ive. The plastic is a weird polyamide nylon-alike with some secret sauce flame retardant mix in that supposedly doesn't corrode copper or tin, so the connectors don't burn terribly well. Nylon usually doesn't burn until it melts anyway. Very hand wavy polycarb would melt or be tiresome to deal with at reflow solder temps, nylon is only like fifty degrees tougher but that's tough enough to make it easy to reflow nylon connectors. Or more specifically it'll keep its shape deep into the decimal places after reflow. They used to make polycarb capacitors from like 1960 to 2010 but they gave up, I guess impossible to hot air reflow them I don't know for sure. Polycarb dielectric caps were good higher-temp milspec capacitors...
(edited to note, if you buy genuine JST corporation connectors the above is true. Fake clones from China, who knows maybe made with copper plated aluminum wire and polyethylene?)
I guess I began using JST XH from my time with hobby lithium batteries but then I just used that connector in an unrelated project because I was familiar with it and there was plenty of stock in 2019.
Are there serious bare wire and/or plastic shortages right now? I've read about price increases but not shortages.