Captive Insulating Flap Terminal Design for Electrical Safety
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electrical terminal designs face issues with non-captive and rigid insulating flaps, leading to potential electrocution risks and increased size, particularly when dealing with small-diameter conductors and complex structures.
Innovation Solution
A terminal design featuring a captive, insulating flap made of plastic with a U-shaped configuration, utilizing a lug for vertical locking and a flexible clip for horizontal locking, which is securely fixed to a metal flap without increasing the terminal's size or bulk, ensuring low production costs and resistance to tearing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If a plastic insulating flap is used to eliminate electrocution risk, then safety is improved, but the flap lacks rigidity and is not captive
Solution Approach 1:
The insulating flap is divided into multiple segments or strips that can be assembled together. This segmentation allows the use of thinner, more flexible plastic material that maintains adequate rigidity for protective function while enabling the flap to be captured and secured within the terminal structure through interlocking mechanisms between segments
Solution Approach 2:
The insulating flap strips are designed to be nested or interlocked within the terminal structure, with each strip fitting into grooves or channels of the cage assembly. This nesting mechanism provides captiveness to the flexible plastic flap, preventing it from detaching while maintaining its flexibility and insulating properties
2Reliability
If a complex insulating structure with multiple components is used to ensure flap captiveness, then flap security is improved, but the device size and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The insulating flap strips are integrated directly with the cage structure through forming operations that combine multiple components into a unified assembly. The strips are formed with built-in attachment features that interlock with the cage, eliminating the need for separate mounting hardware or complex assembly mechanisms, thus maintaining simplicity while ensuring captiveness
Data Source
Figure 1~3
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Figure 7
AI summary
The terminal (1) has a metal cover insulating flap (10) laterally mounted around a metal cover flap (9) along direction perpendicular to direction of displacement of a screw or cage (3). Locking units are constituted by a pin and a thumb notch for locking the flap (10) with respect to the flap (9) in vertical direction parallel to the displacement axis. A clip locks the flap (10) with respect to the flap (9) in horizontal direction perpendicular to the displacement axis.