Wearable Latching Mechanism for Reliable Watchband Assembly
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional latches in wearable smart devices suffer from poor reliability and inflexible assembly and disassembly due to over-pressure affecting the spring bar's elasticity and misalignment of fixing holes during assembly.
Innovation Solution
A latching mechanism featuring a latching housing with elastic members, push rods, and a packaging housing that allows for sliding and clamping posts to easily engage with fixing holes, enhancing assembly and disassembly reliability through a structured design with limiting holes, matching posts, and positioning slots.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a spring bar is used to assemble the latch onto the watch frame, then the latch can be fixed to the watch frame, but over-pressure during assembly affects the spring bar's elasticity and reduces reliability
Solution Approach 1:
The latch is divided into separate components: a body portion, a push rod, and an elastic member. This segmentation allows the elastic member to be pre-assembled in a low-stress state and prevents over-pressure transmission to the spring bar during assembly, thereby maintaining its elasticity and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The elastic member is pre-assembled onto the push rod before final installation onto the watch frame. This preliminary assembly allows the elastic member to be positioned and tensioned in a controlled manner, avoiding the over-pressure that would occur if the entire latch assembly were forced onto the frame at once.
2Ease of operation
If tweezers are used to press the spring bar end to align fixing holes, then assembly can be performed, but the process is inflexible and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The latch assembly is designed to be self-aligning through the interaction of the push rod, elastic member, and fixing holes. The elastic member provides automatic tensioning and the push rod guides alignment, eliminating the need for external tools like tweezers and manual alignment operations, thereby improving ease of operation and reducing assembly time.
3Reliability
If the spring bar space after assembly is small with weak spring force, then the structure is compact, but the spring bar may be disengaged from the fixing hole
Solution Approach 1:
The elastic member is nested within the body portion of the latch, with the push rod extending from it. This nested configuration allows the elastic member to be contained within a compact space while still maintaining sufficient engagement length and force to reliably secure the latch to the watch frame.
Solution Approach 2:
The elastic member is designed with optimized local properties: it has sufficient length and tension in the engagement region to ensure reliable connection to the fixing hole, while the overall latch structure maintains a compact form factor through strategic placement and sizing of components.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The mechanism simplifies assembly and disassembly, improves reliability, and ensures a secure connection between the watchband and watch frame, making the process easier and more reliable.
Implementation Method 1
an elastic member mounting hole through which an elastic member penetrates and from which two ends of the elastic member extend; two push rods, oppositely abutting against the two ends of the elastic member
Data Source
AI summary
Provided are a latching mechanism and a wearable device including the latching mechanism. The latching mechanism includes: a latching housing (1), including an elastic member mounting hole (2) through which an elastic member (3) penetrates and from which two ends of the elastic member extend; two push rods (4), oppositely abutting against two ends of the elastic member and connected to the latching housing in a slide fit, each push rod including a clamping post (5) protruding in a direction away from the latching housing, and the clamping posts of push rods being located in same axis and parallel with an axial direction of the elastic member; and a packaging housing (6), packaging and covering the latching housing and push rods in a direction perpendicular to the axial direction of the elastic member, exposing side surfaces (7), perpendicular to the axial direction of the elastic member, of the push rods.