This invention relates to electrical terminal connections, in particular, a machine to make a welded or heat staked electrical terminal connection.
Present electrical terminal connections such as made by AMP electrical terminal, a Division of Tyco Electronics, use only a mechanical connection between the wire and the terminal. This style of terminal is made by skiving sharp grooves in the metal of the terminal housing. These grooves are sufficiently sharp to cut through the lacquer-type of magnet wire insulation of the wire that is inserted therein. Thus, the electrical connection between the wire and the metal terminal housing depends solely on the sufficiency of the mechanical connection between the two.
Current crimping machines do not allow the terminal connector to be welded to burn away this lacquer insulation without the terminal having to be moved in some way. Since the connector wires with the terminal connection are wound on bulky electrical apparatus, such as wound motors, it is not possible to efficiently weld the connector using present techniques because the state of the art methods require moving the terminals. This extra step would also require more work for the machine operator.
There is not found in the prior art an apparatus that enables an operator to make a welded electrical connector that can be welded in the region of the crimped legs of the terminal so that the operator merely has to put the wire into the proper location on the apparatus and the apparatus will crimp and weld the terminal connector and feed the next terminal into place and so on.
It is an aspect of the invention to provide a machine that will remove the lacquer type of insulation in the region of the crimp without requiring the terminal connector to be moved.
It is another aspect of the invention to provide a machine that can use any type of terminal connector that has at least one wire having this type of insulation. Examples of some of the common types of terminal connectors that can be used with the invention are shown in
Another aspect of the invention is to improve the mechanical connection as a result of heating the terminal in the region of the crimp, which can, in some cases, actually weld the wire to the terminal.
It is another aspect of the invention to provide a terminal connector that has an improved connection between the wire and the terminal without the need for skiving the terminal in order to remove the lacquer type of insulation.
It is still another aspect of the invention to provide a terminal connector that can be adapted for use on any wire type combination of insulated wires provided at least one wire is coated with a lacquer type of insulating material.
Finally, it is an aspect of the invention to provide a terminal connector that is otherwise a standard type except for the connection improvement in the region of the crimp.
These and other aspects of the invention will become apparent in light of the detailed description of the invention which follows.
Referring now to
As shown in
Depending on the requirements, type of wire used, diameter, etc., in some cases merely the insulation is burned away to provide the electrical connection between the metal wire and the metal connector. However, in other situations, the metal to metal connection is actually a weld. With the invention, the crimp height 50 is not as critical as found using standard crimp methods and connectors. The weld parameters can be set so that crimp height 50 becomes relatively unimportant as the welding process can compensate for a widely toleranced crimp height 50.
As shown in
While certain representative embodiments of the invention have been described herein for the purposes of illustration, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that modification therein may be made without departure from the spirit and scope of the invention.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60616430 | Oct 2004 | US |