Hitachi Cable, Inc.

Koyo Seiko Company, Ltd.

Toyoda Koki Kabushiki Kaisha

Favess Co., Ltd.

Satoshi Mizushima

Osamu Mochizuki

Masaaki Aoyagi

Tsukasa Kasahara

Yoshinori Tsukamoto

Masaaki Nagai

Takahiro Sanada

Fumio Shimizu

Tetsuhiro Yamamoto

Daisuke Kimoto

Yoshirou Sakai

In a torque sensor having lead pins connected to a wire harness, the wire harness includes: a plurality of lead wires; a plurality of connection terminals each having a sleeve mounted around each of the lead pins and a connection portion extended from an outer periphery of the sleeve to be connected with one end of the lead wire; and an electrically insulating terminal holder for holding the plural connection terminals. The terminal holder includes: a sleeve holder portion for holding the sleeves in mutually spaced relation in order to prevent the sleeves from contacting each other; and a connection-portion holder portion for holding the connection portions in mutually spaced relation in order to prevent the connection portions from bending to contact each other.

Torque sensor, wire harness, electric power steering assembly and terminal holder

A twisted flat cable is provided which includes parallel fused portions and twisted pair portions alternating with the parallel fused portions. TPO (thermoplastic olefin) is used as an insulating material for an insulative layer that covers conductors to provide separately insulated conductors constituting the parallel fused portions and the twisted pair portions in the twisted flat cable. By virtue of this construction, the twisted flat cable has excellent transmission characteristics.

Twisted flat cable

A plurality of perforations has been defined on a plastic tape to be laminated on insulated wire cores . Accordingly, intrusions of the plastic tape in between each of pair-twisted sections are elevated in laminating step of the plastic tape . As a result, collapses in the pair-twisted sections decrease, and in addition, portions of a tape material corresponding to perforations defined on the plastic tape are replaced by air, so that dielectric constant between conductors of the insulated wire cores decreases, whereby decrease in impedance can be reduced. Thus, a twisted flat cable I exhibiting flexibility and accompanying with no decrease in impedance in laminating step is provided.

A mold is disposed just behind twist ports for forming twisted pair portions of a flat cable. When a plurality of insulated conductors in their portion corresponding to a parallel portion, before fusion, of a flat cable are passed through the twist ports, the rotation of the twist ports is stopped to permit the plurality of insulated conductors to be parallel aligned with an identical pitch. The mold comprises a combination of two molds each having a plurality of grooves for accommodating therein the plurality of insulated conductors delivered from the twist ports. Upon accommodation of the plurality of insulated conductors within the grooves of the mold, fusion between adjacent insulated conductors in their insulative layers is carried out in the mold to form a parallel fused portion. The above constitution can realize a process and an apparatus for producing a flat cable that require neither a large space nor large equipment, can easily vary the spacing between parallel fused portions, and can properly fuse adjacent insulated conductors in their insulative layers to each other to form a parallel fused portion.

Process and apparatus for producing flat cable

In a flat cable including fused portions and twisted pair portions, the length of the twisted pair portions being not constant, the twist pitch of the twisted pair portions being substantially constant independently of the length of the twisted pair portions, some of the twisted pair portions being constituted by S twists with the other twisted pair portions being constituted by Z twists, the next twisted pair portion is twisted in such a manner that, when the number of twists in the S twisted pair portions in the longitudinal direction of the flat cable is added as &ldquo;plus (&plus;)&rdquo; value with the number of twists in the Z twisted pair portions being added as &ldquo;minus (&minus;)&rdquo; value, the twist sense in the next twisted pair portion is Z twist sense if the integrated value of the number of twists is plus (&plus;) while the twist sense in the next twisted pair portion is S twist sense if the integrated value of the number of twists is minus (&minus;). By virtue of the above constitution, a flat cable with the spacing of fused portions being not constant can be produced without requiring any twist back mechanism.

Growing community of inventors

Ibaraki, Japan

Satoshi Mizushima