The present invention relates to a connector, and more particularly to a connector in which an upper cover is closed to an open rear opening of a plastic housing to press a plurality of wires against piercing sections of terminals located in passages provided on the plastic housing, so that insulating skins of the wires are cut to allow electrical connection of conductors in the wires with the terminals without the need of soldering, and time and cost for assembling the connector are reduced.
With the highly developed technologies, computers have been designed to execute more and more advanced functions. In other words, the central processing unit (CPU) inside each computer has incredibly high digital operating capability. Moreover, with the popularization of Internet, users demand for even faster upload and download speeds via the use of, for example, optical fibers, broad bands, asymmetric/asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL), etc. Under this condition, all other peripherals of the computer system, including various kinds of driving and driven elements, must also have a high operating speed corresponding to the high-speed CPU. For this purpose, it is very important for signal transmission cables, particularly connectors provided at two ends of the cables, to transmit signals between the CPU and the various driving and driven elements at a very high speed. It is also known that there are many devices, such as the universal serial bus (USB), the cable connectors, etc., being provided with an externally connected bus that supports a transmission rate as high as 12 Mbps with each port thereof capable of connecting up to 127 devices at the same time, as well as the functions of plug-and-play and hot-plugging.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are perspective and sectioned side views, respectively, of a conventional connector to show the assembling thereof. As shown, the conventional connector includes a plastic core 1, a plurality of terminals 2, and a plurality of wires 3.
The plastic core 1 is internally provided with a plurality of equally spaced terminal holes that extend from a front to a rear end of the plastic core 1. A flat plate 11 is rearward extended from the rear end of the plastic core 1, and a plurality of terminal slots are formed on the flat plate 11 corresponding to the terminal holes. Each of the terminals 2 is in the form of a flat strip divided into a bent front conductive section 21 and a rear soldering section 22. The terminals 2 are provided on a main body thereof with barbs. Each of the wires 3 has a bare front end 31.
To assemble the terminal 2 to the plastic core 1, the conductive section 21 of the terminal 2 is inserted into one terminal hole from a rear end of the plastic core 1, so that the soldering section 22 of the terminal 2 is positioned in a corresponding terminal slot on the flat plate 11. When the terminal 2 is inserted into the plastic core 1, the barbs on the body of the terminal 2 are forced into the terminal hole to hook to inner wall surfaces of the terminal hole, making the terminal 2 fixedly located in the terminal hole. The soldering section 22 of the terminal 2 is exposed from the rear end of the plastic core 1 for the bare front end 31 of the wire 3 to overlap thereat. Thereafter, the bare front end 31 of the wire 3 is manually soldered to the soldering section 22 of the terminal 2 using soldering iron and soldering stick. Finally, a molding machine (not shown) is used to integrally mold a plastic case 4 around the wires 3 and the plastic core 1 to complete the connector.
During the process of soldering the terminals 2 to the wires 3, since the terminals 2 have been previously inserted into the plastic core 1, the high temperature of the soldering iron tends to deform the plastic core 1 to therefore adversely affect the quality of the produced connector. Moreover, in the conventional connector, the terminals 2 are forced into and hooked to the plastic core 1 to thereby locate in the connector. To enable the terminals 2 to firmly hook to the plastic core 1, it is necessary to provide barbs on two sides of the terminals 2. In forming the terminals 2 with barbs, increased amount of scrap is produced when punching the material strips to form the terminals 2. In assembling the conventional connector, the terminals 2 must be accurately inserted into the terminal holes in the plastic core 1 with a properly controlled insertion force to avoid biased or deformed terminals 2. Moreover, an additional mold must be made to produce the plastic case 4 for integrally and tightly enclosing and fixing the wires 3, the terminals 2, and the plastic core 1 together. The mold would inevitably increase the manufacturing cost of the conventional connector to adversely reduce the competition ability of the connector in the international markets.
It is therefore tried by the inventor to develop a connector to eliminate drawbacks existed in the conventional connector, so that the connector may be quickly assembled to reduce the manufacturing cost thereof.
A primary object of the present invention is to provide a connector in which an upper cover is closed to an open rear opening of a plastic housing to press a plurality of wires against piercing sections of terminals located in passages provided on the plastic housing, so that insulating skins of the wires are cut to allow electrical connection of conductors in the wires with the terminals without the need of soldering, and time and cost for assembling the connector are reduced.
To achieve the above and other objects, the connector of the present invention mainly includes a plurality of terminals, each of which includes a front conductive section and a rear piercing section; a plastic housing being provided at a front part with internal terminal slots for receiving the conductive sections of the terminals therein and at an open rear part with passages for receiving the piercing sections of the terminals; and an upper cover for closing the open rear part of the plastic housing. The upper cover is closed to the open rear opening of the plastic housing to press a plurality of wires against the piercing sections located in the passages on the plastic housing, so that insulating skins of the wires are cut to allow electrical connection of conductors in the wires with the terminals without the need of soldering.