Electrical connectors – Preformed panel circuit arrangement – e.g. – pcb – icm – dip,... – Within distinct housing spaced from panel circuit arrangement
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-13
2001-09-04
Sircus, Brian (Department: 2839)
Electrical connectors
Preformed panel circuit arrangement, e.g., pcb, icm, dip,...
Within distinct housing spaced from panel circuit arrangement
C439S676000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06283768
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to an RJ-45 style modular connector. These it, connectors have a female portion known as a jack or socket and a male portion called a plug. The present invention concerns an improved plug for an RJ-45 connector. The jack typically has a housing containing a planar array of parallel contacts which make sliding, electrically-conducting contact with the plug. The jack contacts often are metal blades having a cantilevered portion that is biased into engagement with the plug in the nature of a leaf spring. For this reason the jack contacts are referred to herein as spring contacts.
RJ-45 connectors were originally developed to terminate flat telephone cable and are very well suited to that application. In recent years these connectors have also been used for data communications purposes including terminations of unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable for high speed data transmission. The latter application has been divided into data transmission speeds called categories with category
5
being data transmission up to 150 megabits per second. At this data rate, the connector becomes an integral part of data transmission wiring and has a large effect on the maximum rate of data transmission. This invention relates to a connector plug that is capable of terminating UTP cable in a category 5 data transmission network.
A UTP cable comprises at least two individual, insulated wires. A wire, as used herein, will refer to the combination of a conductor and a surrounding insulation layer. Two such wires, known as a pair, are twisted together. For most data communications applications the UTP cable will have four pairs. The plurality of twisted pairs are gathered together within an outer insulation jacket. This imparts a configuration that is relatively round compared to flat cables. In other words, the gathered pairs of the UTP cable define a two-dimensional cross-section that will be referred to herein as a bundled cross-section. The bundled cross-section may include one or more inner wires in the interior of the bundle and a plurality of surrounding outer wires. The bundled cross-section contrasts with a linear configuration which, as used herein, is a group of wires, conductors or contacts laid side-by-side next to one another in a flat, planar array which defines essentially a one-dimensional cross-section (ignoring for this definitional purpose the thickness of each wire). That is, a linear configuration or array is one in which the centers of the individual wires, when viewed in cross-section, define a straight line.
Using a standard RJ-45 connector with UTP cable is difficult because the cable is bundled but the RJ-45 connector's contacts must terminate in a linear fashion. That is, when using an RJ-45 connector on UTP cable the two-dimensional, bundled cross-section of the UTP cable must be transposed to a one-dimensional configuration. In a sense the problem is one of fitting a round peg into a flat hole. The prior art solution to this problem is to untwist the wires, arrange them linearly in the correct order and insert the wires into the connector and crimp the connector onto the wires. But untwisting of the individual wires of the cable causes degradation of the data transmission capability. One reason for this is the linear array is subject to cross talk on the nested pairs at the center of the array. Further, the strain relief action of existing connectors tends to smash the individual conductors into an oval shape which further degrades their transmission capability.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention allows for easy termination of UTP cable in an RJ-45 plug in a manner that reduces the amount of unbundling of the pairs and reduces cross talk. The plug has an outer shell enclosing a contact block, attachment elements in the forms of insulation displacement connector (IDC) pins and a wire mounting block. The contact block has a linear array of contacts on one edge which are arranged to mate with similar contacts in the RJ-45 jack into which the plug is inserted. The linear contacts are electrically connected to the IDC pins either by being integrally formed therewith in a plate or by means of a printed circuit (pc) board. The IDC pins are mounted to either the contact block or the pc board in a non-linear array. The wire mounting block has a body with openings through which wires are placed. Grooves in the front end face of the body receive the wires and present them for connection to the IDC pins. The wire mounting block will also employ a strain relief that will capture the cable's outer insulation jacket and contain the cable in a bundled cross-section.
The installer will strip off a length of the outer insulation jacket of the UTP cable exposing the individual wires of the twisted pairs. The pairs will be inserted into the wire mounting block and wrapped around the body, laying the wires into the grooves and troughs on the front and side faces of the mounting block. The UTP cable is untwisted only enough to allow the wires to separate and fit into the grooves. The outer insulation jacket will be inserted far enough that the strain relief will contact the outer insulation jacket, providing strain relief action when the wire mounting block is inserted into the shell. The terminating action will occur when the mounting block is pushed into the shell and the IDC pins penetrate the wire insulation, making contact with the individual wire conductors. In the pc board form there is a relief slot beneath each wire in the end of the wire mounting block to allow the IDC pins to slide past the wire into the body of the mounting block. The mounting block will then snap into the housing completing the connection. The strain relief may be provided by two half sleeves attached to the wire mounting block by living hinges. The sleeves will fold together and close on the cable after the cable has been inserted into the mounting block.
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Cook Alex McFarron Manzo Cummings & Mehler, Ltd.
Ideal Industries Inc.
Nguyen Son V.
Sircus Brian
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