Automotive Junction Box Cover Restricting Walls
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electrical junction boxes for automobiles require additional components to manage wire harness routing, leading to increased production costs and cumbersome assembly and disassembly processes, particularly when dealing with wire harnesses that exhibit elasticity, which can cause fitting and mounting issues.
Innovation Solution
An electrical junction box design featuring a box body with U-shaped wiring grooves and a cover that restricts outward deflection, utilizing temporary locking parts and restricting walls to secure the wire harnesses without external components, allowing automatic routing and enhanced waterproofing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If additional components (clips or protectors) are used to restrict wire harness routing, then the wire harness can be properly routed and secured, but production cost increases due to additional parts and assembly work
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates the wire harness routing restriction function directly into the cover structure by forming restricting walls that extend into the box body interior. This merges the cover's protective function with the routing restriction function, eliminating the need for separate clips or protectors and reducing overall component count while maintaining reliable wire harness positioning
Solution Approach 2:
The cover is designed to perform multiple functions simultaneously: it protects electrical components inside the box body, restricts wire harness routing through integrated restricting walls, and provides mounting surfaces for fastening to the box body. This multi-functionality eliminates the need for dedicated routing restriction components
2Device complexity
If a cover with restricting walls is used to restrict wire harness routing, then production cost is reduced by eliminating additional components, but assembly and disassembly operations become more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The cover is designed as a separable component that can be independently removed from the box body, allowing wire harnesses to be accessed by simply detaching the cover rather than disassembling multiple fastening points. The restricting walls are integrated into the cover structure itself, maintaining routing control while enabling easy cover removal and reattachment
Solution Approach 2:
The restricting walls act as intermediaries that guide wire harnesses through designated paths while allowing the cover to be removed as a single unit. The walls maintain routing control during operation but do not prevent cover removal, serving as temporary guides rather than permanent constraints
3Reliability
If wire harnesses are drawn through tubular guide parts of covers, then routing is controlled, but the wiring operation becomes troublesome and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from using tubular guide parts that require wire harnesses to be threaded through them to using planar restricting walls that extend into the box body interior. These walls create defined routing paths on the surface level, allowing wire harnesses to be laid along the walls without threading operations, significantly improving wiring efficiency while maintaining routing control
4Device complexity
If wire harnesses are secured in wiring grooves without external components, then production cost is reduced, but holding power may be insufficient for elastic wire harnesses
Solution Approach 1:
The restricting walls are pre-formed as integral parts of the cover structure before assembly. When the cover is mounted on the box body, these walls automatically extend into the box body interior to create routing restrictions and holding points for wire harnesses, providing preliminary structural support that prevents elastic rebound without requiring additional fastening components
Data Source
AI summary
An electrical junction box facilitates a worker's wiring of a wire harness without using a superfluous component and allows the workability in assembling the electrical junction box as well as that in disassembling to be improved. The electrical junction box includes a box body and a cover to be mounted to the box body after wiring wire harnesses about the box body. The box body has wiring grooves shaped to have U-shaped cross sections and arranged on its exterior surface to accommodate the wire harnesses, which have been drawn out of the box body through its one side and further led from an upper part of the one side downwardly. Left and right sidewalls defining each groove are provided, at their leading ends, with temporary locking parts restricting slipping of the wire harness out of the wiring groove. The cover is provided with restricting walls (sidewalls, rib) restricting outward deflection of the left and right sidewalls. In mounting the cover to the box body, the restricting walls are inserted to the outside of the sidewalls and between the adjoining sidewalls. The restricting walls have withstanding parts formed to prevent the temporary locking parts from being deflected outside.