Terminal block with shoulder contact and formed ground plate retained by plastic insert

Abstract

A connector has a plastic housing (10) with a plurality of cavities or holes (13) for accepting “chips” (3), i.e., electrical elements such as transient suppression diodes, capacitors, metal oxide varisters, spark gap devices, and so on, connected between the a contact (20) and ground for RFI or EMI suppression or the like. The contacts have shoulders with chip-contacting areas (23), preferably one surface of an annular flange (21). This allows numerous cavities to be arrayed around the axis of the contact (which can be radially symmetrical) so that numerous chips can be put in parallel between the contact and ground. In the case of capacitor chips, for example, this allows increasing the capacitance or varying the capacitance from one contact to the next. Grounding the ends of the chips opposite the contact shoulder is through a conductive spring, which can be a tine (43) bent from the inner periphery of an opening in a sheet-metal ground plate (40), or else can be a distinct item such as a piece of conductive elastomer (70). The ground plate is preferably fitted into the bottom of the housing along with a plastic retention insert which acts as a platform to supporting the tines and resist the force of the springs against the chips. The ground plate can be embodied as one or two ground strips running along either side of the connector. A contact has compliant tines that are augmented with an internal coiled spring. The contacts can be used (but are not limited in application) in a connector press fit into a PCB.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.