Electrical Connector Guide Structure for Contact Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electrical connectors face issues with positional deviations between contacts during mating, leading to potential damage and mating failure.
Innovation Solution
The electrical connector design includes a housing with guides that extend beyond the contacts, ensuring precise alignment by guiding the contacts into mating positions, preventing positional deviations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If connectors are mated without guides, then the structure is simpler, but positional deviation between contacts occurs leading to mating failure and damage
Solution Approach 1:
The guide acts as an intermediary element between the housing and the contact, providing a dedicated alignment feature that guides the mating contact into proper position before the contact itself engages, thereby preventing positional deviation without requiring complex adjustment mechanisms
Solution Approach 2:
The guide performs the alignment function before the contact engagement occurs. By extending the guide beyond the contact in the direction of insertion, the guide establishes proper positioning in advance, ensuring that when the contact makes contact with the mating connector, it is already correctly aligned
2Manufacturing precision
If guides are added to extend beyond contacts, then positional alignment is improved, but the connector dimensions increase
Solution Approach 1:
The guide is designed with local quality differentiation - it extends beyond the contact only in the insertion direction where alignment is needed, while maintaining a compact profile in other directions. This allows the guide to provide necessary alignment precision without uniformly increasing the connector dimensions in all directions
Data Source
AI summary
An electrical connector (1) includes: a housing (60); at least one contact (20) that is housed in a housing hole (64) including the body (63) of the housing, and extends in a predetermined direction from the housing body (63); and a guide (65) that is disposed contiguously to the housing body (63), and extends from the housing in the predetermined direction. The size of a portion of the guide (65), extending from the housing body (63), is greater than the size of a portion of the contact (20), extending from the housing body (63). The electrical connector (1) is mated with a mating electrical connector and prevents positional deviation between contacts in a pair, which are mated to each other, in a case in which such connectors are connected while being mated to each other.