The present invention relates to electrical connectors and, more particularly, to protective hoods for electrical connectors.
Electrical connectors for mass connection of signals conventionally include a metal connector housing containing male or female pins through which connections are made to mating elements of a plug or jack. An insulating hood is conventionally connected to the metal housing both to provide a gripping surface for inserting and removing the connector and for strain relief for the wires exiting the connector. Strain relief is conventionally provided by either molding the mating parts of the connector to tightly fit a cable passage within the connector hood to a particular cable size or by providing a family of slip-in adapters from which a particular one can be selected to adjust the passage size to the cable size.
One such strain relief device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,569,914 wherein a molded rigid planar member is held in gripping contact with the cable when the hood is assembled. The disclosed device is specific to the particular cable diameter used and a single hood is not adaptable to cable diameters which may range from those containing only two or three fine-gauge wires to those containing as many as fifty or more. Thus, to use the disclosed device on a range of cable sizes, a family of devices must be manufactured and stocked. This, of course, increases the design, manufacture and overhead cost of using such a hood.
One apparatus for adapting a single hood to a range of cable sizes is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,794,960 wherein a screw-driven clamp bar is urged against one side of the cable sheath to thereby capture the cable between the clamp bar and an opposed surface of a passage within the hood. This device not only requires a threaded hole in the hood, but also requires the additional parts of a clamp bar and screw. Furthermore, since the clamp bar is forcibly held in contact against a limited surface area of one side of the cable, this contact must be positioned in an area where the wires are covered by a cable sheath in order to avoid damaging the wires themselves.
The last-mentioned patent also illustrates a desirable feature of connector hoods; that is, a feature which permits exiting the cable from the hood either axially or laterally in order to adapt the cable routing to the user's needs. Lateral exit is enabled by providing for the optional installation of an external cable clamp for binding the cable to the hood and to thereby constrain the exit in one lateral direction.
A further strain relief is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,293 wherein the wires from the connector pins are at least partly wrapped about a strain relief member which contains comb-like depressions therein helping to hold the wires. This patent also discloses exiting the wires either axially or in either or both of two lateral directions.