Brief Description of the Prior Art
Resilient contacts for connecting a conductor to a bus bar are well known in the patented prior art, as evidenced by the U.S. patents to Beege, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,484 and Delarue, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,879,204, among others.
As evidenced by the German Auslegeschrift No. 1,261,923, the German patent No. 4233446 and the European patent No. 908,965, the clamping edge at the free end of the clamping leg of the resilient contact normally continues to be pointed toward the electrical conductor as the clamping leg is displaced toward the released position, whereupon as the conductor is withdrawn from the contact, there is a possibility of damaging the conductor, which may be particularly undesirable in the case of a multi-wire conductor, or a fine-wire conductor. This applies also to the resilient contact of the German patent No. 2062158 B2, wherein the free end of the clamping leg of the resilient contact is bent only at a small angle.
As shown by the German Auslegeschrift No. 1,261,923 and the European patent No. 908,8965, it has been proposed to provide adjacent the clamping leg of a resilient contact an operating member that functions to displace the clamping leg toward a disengaged position relative to the conductor. These devises have generally proven to be undesirable, however, owing to the fact that the actuation surface on the clamping leg lies ahead of the clamping edge. When the actuating devices are in the form of levers or rams, as shown by the German patent Nos. DE 2062158 B2 and DE 4233446 C1, for example, the points of engagement are at undesirable locations on the clamping leg ahead of the clamping edge.
The present invention was developed to avoid the above and other drawbacks of the known resilient connectors.