Hughes Aircraft Company

Delphi Technologies, Inc.

Robert E Daugherty

Blake F Woith

Christopher M Schreiber

Eric Dean Jensen

Terry Shing Wang

Scott P Cohen

James R Walen

Kenneth G Given, Ii

A shim is provided which can be used in a connector system, whereby a flexible connector having contact surfaces is compressed against an electronic circuit board by a resilient material. The shim is incorporated between the resilient material and the flexible connector contact surfaces so as to uniformly transfer the load from the resilient material to the contact surfaces. Moreover, the shim prevents the resilient material from taking a set and the flexible connector from draping when operating under hot and/or high load conditions.

Bump contact force concentration system and method

A multi-layer rigid-flex circuit (20) is formed of a number of flexible layers (62-70) on a rigid substrate (100) with individuals ones of the layers having laterally projecting arms (32,38) that define flexible circuit connections to individual ones of a number of ceramic circuit boards (10,12,14,16). The laterally projecting flexible arms (32,34,36,38) are each formed with gold dot or projecting feature pressure contacts (40a-40g) which are pressed against mating sets of circuit board contact pads (40a-40g) by a clamping bar (120) that is bolted to the rigid circuit board. Thus the interconnections between the rigid-flex circuit and the circuit boards are effectively built into the rigid-flex circuit, requiring only a clamp to complete the connection.

Raised feature/gold dot pressure interconnections of rigid-flex circuits

An electrical connector is provided for connecting a flexible circuit (45) to a printed circuit board (14). The connector includes a housing (10) within which is a slide (26) beneath which is a pressure bar (34) and a pad (42). The housing (10) is attachable to a circuit board (14) and a flexible circuit end can be inserted into the housing (10) beneath the pad (42). The slide (26) is moved longitudinally, causing cam surfaces (29, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39) on the slide (26) and pressure bar (34) to force the pressure bar (34) against the flexible circuit (45). This causes contacts (47) on the flexible circuit (45) to firmly engage contacts (46) on the circuit board (14) to effect an electrical connection.

Sliding wedge electrical connector

An electrical connector (10) is provided in which a flexible circuit (11) is attached to the connector assembly which is associated with a circuit board (12) by sliding onto pins (56) that project from the board (12). The connector assembly includes a housing (13) within which is a pressure bar (29) bonded to a pad (37) that is bonded to the flexible circuit (11). A slide (41) on the exterior of the housing (13) can actuate a spring (54) to cause the pressure bar (29) to press the contacts (39) on the flexible circuit (11) against the contacts (40) of a circuit board (12).

Growing community of inventors

Irvine, CA, United States of America

Robert E Daugherty