Electrical connectors – With coupling separator – Including retainer or joiner
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-29
2001-02-27
Bradley, Paula (Department: 2833)
Electrical connectors
With coupling separator
Including retainer or joiner
Reexamination Certificate
active
06193532
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention is concerned with rapid installation or removal of electronic printed circuit boards into or from an enclosure.
BACKGROUND
Many pieces of electrical and electronic equipment are made up of “rack mounted” enclosures printed circuit boards that slide into or out of position along fixed immobile racks. There is a strong trend towards operating such equipment continuously during the installation or removal of any circuit boards. During such “hot swapping,” it must be possible to access the board of interest very quickly but without compromising safety, grounding, operation and electrical shielding of adjacent boards, and so forth. The increasingly smaller sizes and closer mountings of modular electronic equipment make this a difficult task, in part because both the number and the density of the connecting pins between boards are increasing as the electronics becomes more sophisticated. Thus, accurate alignment of the circuit board into the rack is important, but achieving such alignment can be time-consuming.
One approach to the problems presented by these conditions are board carriers, which are modular frames that fit closely within the rack and can carry a variety of boards of different functions. The carriers are carefully designed to hold the circuit boards in their proper position while the carrier is inserted into the rack along rails. The carriers may be inserted with relatively less accuracy than is required by the circuit board itself, because the design of the rail system provides the needed accurate alignment as the carrier is moved down the rail into the rack.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
The invention is an assembly designed to increase the ease with which a printed circuit board carrier may be inserted or extracted from an enclosure. The assembly includes a movable lever mounted to the carrier, and a guide piece mounted to the enclosure. A pin on the lever engages a curved pin slot within the guide piece.
During insertion, the shape of the pin slot first requires the pin to pass through a portion of the carrier that is substantially parallel to the direction of insertion, but does not permit rotation of the lever. After passing through this first portion of the pin slot, the pin will be at the entrance to a second portion of the guide slot, which means that the carrier will be in a position at which the lever may rotate. Such rotation places the pin in a second portion of the pin slot that is oriented in a substantially different direction from the direction of the first portion. When the pin in fully inserted in this second portion, the carrier is held in place.
During removal, the same second portion of the pin slot constrains the pin enough to hold the carrier in place while the lever rotates away from the carrier. Eventually the lever rotates enough to place the pin in the first portion of the pin slot, i.e., the portion is substantially parallel to the direction of removal of the carrier. At that point, the carrier may be removed by pulling on the lever, because the pin may pass freely through the first portion of the pin slot.
Two mirror-image assemblies, one on each side of the carrier, are typically used.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5238418 (1993-08-01), Koiner
patent: 5385870 (1995-01-01), Maue et al.
patent: 5586003 (1996-12-01), Schmitt et al.
patent: 5654873 (1997-08-01), Smithson et al.
patent: 5975735 (1999-11-01), Schmitt
Bradley Paula
Schwegman Lundberg Woessner & Kluth P.A.
Silicon Graphics Inc.
Ta Tho D.
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