Electrical connectors – Electromagnetic or electrostatic shield – Shielding individually surrounding or interposed between...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-20
2001-06-19
Sircus, Brian (Department: 2839)
Electrical connectors
Electromagnetic or electrostatic shield
Shielding individually surrounding or interposed between...
C439S541500
Reexamination Certificate
active
06247969
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the art of electrical connectors and, particularly, to a card connector with a grounding terminal for connecting pc cards or other memory device to an underlying printed circuit board.
BACKGROUND
A known card-receiving connector has a lateral arrangement of signal pin terminals mounted in its insulating housing and a grounding shield or grounding terminal arranged generally parallel to the signal pin terminals. The signal pin terminals are adapted to mate with receptacle terminals arranged along a lateral edge of a mating card, and the grounding shield is adapted to engage the outer conductive panel of the card. The card connector may have a single arrangement or port of signal pin terminals for mating to a single card, or it may have two or more arrangements or ports of signal pin terminals arranged vertically above one another for receiving two or more cards. Some card connectors also include card-ejection mechanisms provided along a longitudinal side thereof.
The grounding shield of a card connector must be connected to the ground circuit of a circuit board on which the card connector is mounted. As, is well-known in the prior art a single port card connector typically has a grounding shield extending rearwardly and covering the rear tails of the signal pin terminals, and the grounding shield has grounding tails extending therefrom adapted to be connected to the ground circuit of the underlying circuit board.
A card connector having two or more ports of signal terminals (“dual or multi-port” card connectors)and which includes two or more grounding shields cannot make a simple grounding connection inasmuch as the grounding shields must connector to each other and to the ground circuit of the printed circuit board. Known dual port card connectors include a relay substrate attached to a rear side of the connector. The signal pin terminals and the tails of the grounding shields are connected to conductors of the relay substrate and the relay substrate is electrically connected to the circuit board by way of an edge connector or other board-to-board connector, thereby making the required connection between the grounding shield of the card connector and the ground circuit of the circuit board.
The above-described connection between the grounding shield of the card connector and the ground circuit of the circuit board prevents the down-sizing of a card-receiving connector, particularly the reduction of the longitudinal size of the card connector, due to the presence of the grounding shield extending rearwardly over the rear tails of the pin terminals and the relatively bulky relay substrate attached to the insulating housing. Furthermore, use of the relay substrate increases the number of parts in the card connector, and accordingly increases the cost of the connector.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object, therefore, of the present invention is to provide a card-receiving connector which permits reduction of the size of the connector in dual and multi-port configurations.
To attain this object a card connector structure according to the present invention uses vertically extending connection rod terminals to connect grounding terminals together from different signal pin terminal ports.
Specifically, a card-receiving connector for connecting pc cards to an underlying printed circuit board comprises a card-connection part and a substrate-connection part adapted to be assembled to the card-connection part. The card-connection part includes an insulating housing having two or more lateral rows of signal pin terminals adapted to mate with corresponding receptacles in a card and two or more grounding terminals arranged generally parallel to each lateral row of signal pin terminals and adapted to engage an outer conductive panel of a respective card. The card-connection part further comprises vertically extending connection rod terminals which are mounted in the insulating housing and extend vertically in between select signal pin terminal and intersect the signal pin terminal port without contacting any of the signal pin terminals, thus permitting each grounding terminal to be connected to the ground circuit of the circuit board via the connection rod terminals.
This structure permits the connection of all of the grounding terminals to the ground circuit of the printed circuit board via the vertical connection rod terminals which are contained within the card-connection part. The vertical connector rod terminals allow the card connector to be down-sized inasmuch as they do not extend rearwardly from the rear side of the card connector and they do not require a relay substrate attached to the rear side of the insulating housing. Accordingly the size of the card connector can be longitudinally reduced.
The connection rod terminals are mounted within the insulating housing of the card-connection part, which also mounts the signal pin terminals, and a lower portion of each connection rod terminal is located on a bottom portion of the insulating housing, thus permitting the connection rod terminals to be soldered to the ground circuit of the circuit board.
The invention also contemplates that the substrate-connection part comprises a plurality of signal-transfer terminals for connecting the signal pin terminals of the card-connection part to selected conductors of the signal circuit of the circuit board, and that contact tails of the signal pin terminals, arranged on a rear side of the insulating housing of the card-connection part, are adapted to mate with corresponding contact tails of the signal-transfer terminals, arranged on a front side of the insulating housing of the substrate-connection part, when the card connection part is assembled to the substrate-connection part.
The substrate-connection part further comprises grounding terminals which are adapted to contact the connection rod terminals when the substrate-connection part is assembled to the card-connection part. The connection rod terminals are mounted in the insulating housing of the card-connection part, and the lower ends of the connection rod terminals are located in a bottom portion of the insulating housing of the card-connection part, to allow the lower ends to make contact with the grounding terminals of the substrate-connection part.
The contact tails of the signal pin terminals are arranged laterally in line for each lateral arrangement of signal pin terminals and the contact tails of the signal-transfer terminals are arranged in corresponding lines to contact the contact tails of the pin terminals upon assembly of the substrate-connection part and the card-connection part.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will be understood from the following description of a card connector according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention, which is shown in accompanying drawings.
REFERENCES:
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patent: 5399105 (1995-03-01), Kaufman et al.
patent: 5643001 (1997-07-01), Kaufman et al.
patent: 5671123 (1997-09-01), Omori et al.
patent: 5688130 (1997-11-01), Huang
patent: 5711679 (1998-01-01), Spickler et al.
patent: 5717573 (1998-02-01), Sakurai
patent: 5775923 (1998-07-01), Tomioka
patent: 5795190 (1998-08-01), Ono
patent: 5954522 (1999-09-01), Ho et al.
patent: 5964597 (1999-10-01), Hirata et al.
patent: 6062904 (2000-05-01), Oguchi et al.
Caldwell Stacey E.
Molex Incorporated
Nasri Javaid
Sircus Brian
LandOfFree
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