Spring plate for attaching bus bar to a printed circuit board

#Electronic devices, such as portable computing devices, tablets, desktops, and all-in-one computers, cell phones, smart phones, and media phones, storage devices, portable media players, navigation systems, monitors and other devices, have become ubiquitous in recent years. These devices typically include circuitry such as processors, input and output circuits, memories, and others. These circuits are typically powered by voltage supplies. These voltage supplies may be a positive supply and ground, a positive supply and a negative supply, a ground and a negative supply, or some combination thereof.

#The circuits in these electronic devices may be located on one or more printed circuit boards. These printed circuit boards may include main-logic boards, motherboards, daughter boards, or other types of boards. To power these circuits, the power supplies may be connected to the boards on which the circuits are located.

#These power supplies may be routed via wires or cables from a printed circuit board to a connector, battery, or other appropriate connection. In situations where large currents are conveyed, a wide power conductor, which may be referred to as a bus bar (sometime written as bus bar) may be used.

#FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of an electronic device according to an embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 2 illustrates a side view of a connection between a bus bar and a printed circuit board according to an embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 3 illustrates the spring plate of FIG. 2;

#FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of an electronic device according to an embodiment of the present invention. This figure, as with the other included figures, is shown for illustrative purposes and does not limit either the possible embodiments of the present invention or the claims.

#This figure illustrates a portion of a printed circuit board 110 supporting a number of integrated circuits 150 and other components 160. Bus bar or power conductor 120 may be connected to a ground, power supply voltage, bias voltage, or other high current line. This connection may be to a connector, cable, battery, or other component. Power connector 120 may be connected to an electrical connection such as traces or a power or ground plane on printed circuit board 110 via spring plate 130 and fastener 140. By using both spring plate 130 and fastener 140, the reliability of the connection between power connector 120 and printed circuit board 110 may be improved. Also, the inclusion of both components may reduce the impedance of the connection between bus bars or power conductors 120 and traces or planes on printed circuit board 110. In various embodiments of the present invention, spring plate 130 may be capable of securing bus bar 120 to printed circuit board 110 both mechanically and electrically in the event that fastener 140 is missing or absent. This may render fastener 140 redundant, thereby increasing the reliability of the connection between bus bar 120 and printed circuit board 110. That is, spring plate 130 may provide a self-contained electrical and mechanical connection between bus bar 120 and printed circuit board 110. It should be noted that while in this example one spring plate 130 is used to secure one bus bar 120 to printed circuit board 110, in other examples, more than one spring plate 130 may be used to secure more than one bus bar 120 to printed circuit board 110.

#Examples of various spring plates that may be used to make electrical connections between power conductors 120 and traces or planes on printed circuit boards 110, as well as to mechanically secure power conductors 120 to printed circuit board 110, are shown in the following figures.