Electrical connectors – With conduit or duct – Including receptacle
Reexamination Certificate
2000-12-06
2002-06-11
Sircus, Brian (Department: 2839)
Electrical connectors
With conduit or duct
Including receptacle
Reexamination Certificate
active
06402536
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to branching connector fixing structures, for instance a branching connector fixing structure for wiring of a great number of wiring harnesses on such as a reinforcement frame.
2. Related Art
The electric instruments and devices, such as measuring instruments and an air conditioner, are installed on an instrument panel of an automobile and connected electrically with the wiring harnesses.
The JP-A-9-66778 “Automotive Wiring Harness” shows an example of the wiring harness that is housed and wired inside a hollow reinforcement that bridges between right and left side panels of an automotive body. The following paragraphs describe on the wiring harness on this gazette.
As shown in
FIG. 11
, a hollow reinforcement
81
is disposed inside an instrument panel
80
, and a wiring harness is housed in a hollow part of the hollow reinforcement
81
, wherein connectors
83
are attached to the branch lines that are branched from the wiring harness while the connectors
83
are respectively attached to apertures
82
in the hollow reinforcement
81
. The connectors
83
are used to connect the branch lines to electric instruments and devices on the instrument panel
80
.
Since the wiring harness is housed in the hollow part of the hollow reinforcement
81
, any space for wiring of the wiring harness need not be secured outside of the hollow reinforcement
81
. Therefore, the external space of the hollow reinforcement
81
, which need not be reserved for wiring of the wiring harness, can be effectively used otherwise.
It is a usual practice that a single kind of hollow reinforcement
81
is applied to various kinds of vehicles instead of preparing various kinds of hollow reinforcements
81
that respectively match the various kinds of vehicles; otherwise increase in the parts count will cause laborious parts control.
The application of the single kind of hollow reinforcement
81
to various kinds of vehicles requires the apertures
82
in the hollow reinforcement
81
for attachment of the connectors
83
to be formed on a straight line to enable application to respective electric instruments and devices of various kinds of vehicles.
However, the formation of apertures
82
of the hollow reinforcement
81
on the single straight, a route of each wiring harness in the hollow reinforcement
81
is determined by the connectors
83
attached to the apertures
82
of the hollow reinforcement
81
.
This makes it difficult to divide the bundled wiring harness into sub-harnesses according to the modules for neat arrangement of the wiring harness. Consequently, bundling of the complicated wiring harness increases a diameter of the bundled wiring harness and arouses problems of degradation in maintenance efficiency of respective sub-harnesses and tangling of wiring harness components in the bundled wiring harness.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of the problems described above, this invention is purposed to provide a branching connector fixing structure that enables compact bundling of the wiring harness, enhancement of respective sub-harness maintenance efficiency and prevention of entanglement of the wiring harness components in the bundled wiring harness.
The invention for achievement of the above-described purposes is a branching connector fixing structure, which has a pair of band-shaped frames that are disposed apart in a direction of thickness, a plurality of flat circuit bodies that are disposed respectively in layers between band-shaped frames, and branching connectors that are respectively disposed on flat circuit bodies, for the purpose of disposing of branching connectors along same surfaces that are parallel to respective band-shaped frames, and which is characterized by that each of the branching connectors is supported via a pair of fixing members bridging between band-shaped frames and fastenable in a predetermined position in a direction where each of fixing members are disposed.
The branching connector fixing structure with this composition enables division of the wiring harness into sub-harnesses according to the modules and bundling of flatly aligned sub-harnesses into flat circuit bodies. Additionally, the flat circuit bodies can be provided in layers between the band-shaped frames so that a pair of fixing members can support each of the branching connectors of the flat circuit bodies.
Since each sub-harness can be bundled with the flat circuit body, maintenance of the wiring harness is available or each sub-harness. In addition, bundling of the flatly aligned wiring harness into the flat circuit bodies can prevent entanglement of the wiring harness.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4429934 (1984-02-01), VandenHoek et al.
patent: 4674819 (1987-06-01), Fujitani et al.
patent: 4815984 (1989-03-01), Sugiyama et al.
patent: 5203711 (1993-04-01), Bogiel
patent: 5460530 (1995-10-01), Toba et al.
patent: 6168122 (2001-01-01), Lobsiger et al.
patent: 6229091 (2001-05-01), Ogawa et al.
patent: 6245998 (2001-06-01), Curry et al.
patent: 6327139 (2001-12-01), Champion et al.
patent: 9-66778 (1997-03-01), None
Katoh Mitsunobu
Nishijima Masataka
Tsukamoto Masashi
Le Thanh-Tam
Yazaki -Corporation
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