The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 25, 1988
Filed:
Apr. 30, 1987
Donald Tomkinson, North Attleboro, MA (US);
John R D'Entremont, Foxboro, MA (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
A resettable, current-responsive, circuit interrupter device has two wide but thin terminals embedded up to a substantial part of their thickness in a side wall of an insulating housing so that sides of the embedded terminal portions are exposed from the housing material along the side wall inside the housing. Terminal ends extend from the bottom of the housing to be connected in a circuit and extend through the top of the housing to be accessible for test purposes. An electrical contact is mounted on the exposed side surface of one embedded terminal portion and a thermostatic strip element is secured to the exposed side surface of the other embedded terminal portion to extend closely along the one housing side to normally engage the contact in a very compact, closed circuit position of the device. A lid overlies the thermostatic strip element. The thermostatic strip element has a selected resistivity and the wide terminals have substantial current capacity so the thermostatic strip self-heats to a selected temperature to open the circuit in response to occurrence of a precisely predetermined overload current condition in the device circuit at any ambient temperature likely to be encountered in an automotive environment.