Electrical connectors – With supporting means for coupling part – Supporting plural – independent coupling parts
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-20
2001-05-29
Patel, Tulsidas (Department: 2839)
Electrical connectors
With supporting means for coupling part
Supporting plural, independent coupling parts
C439S607070
Reexamination Certificate
active
06238240
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to a PC (Personal Computer) card connector assembly, and particularly to a stacked PC card connector assembly having a spacer for facilitating connection between the assembly and a connector mounted on a circuit board.
A PC card connector is commonly for use in a note book computer for providing electrical connection between a PC card and a mother board. An electrical device on the mother board reads data from or writes information to the PC card. Computer manufacturers tend to install stacked PC card connectors such as those disclosed in Taiwan Patent Application Nos. 83218076 and 84112508.
Referring to
FIGS. 1 and 2
, a conventional PC card connector assembly
1
comprises a pair of stacked housings
11
each retaining two rows of signal terminals
10
. Two card edge connectors
40
are mounted on a circuit board
4
. Two daughter boards
3
are received in the card edge connectors
40
. Distal ends of the terminals
10
extending beyond the housings
11
are inserted into the daughter boards
3
and soldered to corresponding connection thereon. However, the terminals
10
in the housings
11
, are arranged with a high pitch such that the corresponding solder sites thereof on the daughter boards
3
are also arranged with a high pitch thereby complicating the soldering process thereof. After the terminals
10
are soldered to the daughter boards
3
, the daughter boards
3
are then inserted into the corresponding card edge connectors
40
. During such a process, the daughter boards
3
are likely to deflect thereby damaging the solder sites and adversely affecting the quality of signal transmission therethrough. The daughter boards
3
of a certain height are perpendicular to the circuit board
4
thereby hindering miniaturization of the note book computer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, a first purpose of the present invention is to provide a PC card connector assembly having a spacer which facilitates electrical connection between the assembly and the mother board.
A second purpose of the present invention is to provide a compact PC card connector.
To fulfill the above-mentioned purposes, a PC card connector assembly in accordance with the present invention comprises stacked upper and lower header connectors and an elongate spacer. Each header connector includes a row of upper terminals and a row of lower terminals. The upper terminals and the lower terminals have mounting portions which are staggered and arranged to lie in the same plane. A first grounding plate is mounted to a top surface of the upper header connector. A second grounding plate mounted to a top surface of the lower header connector has a row of grounding fingers downwardly extending therefrom. The first grounding plate downwardly extends and electrically contacts the second grounding plate. The spacer defines three rows of passageways for accommodating the mounting portions of the terminals and the grounding fingers. A connector mounted on a mother board includes two rows of mating contacts and a metal plate. The spacer is inserted into the connector and the terminals and the grounding fingers engage with the contacts and the metal plate, respectively.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5636999 (1997-06-01), Hirai et al.
patent: 5688130 (1997-11-01), Huang
patent: 5775923 (1998-07-01), Tomioka
patent: 5795190 (1998-08-01), Ono
patent: 5967803 (1999-10-01), Ho
Chung Wei Te
Hon Hai - Precision Ind. Co., Ltd.
Patel Tulsidas
Webb Brian S.
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