Posted to News on 25th Jan 2012, 22:04
Scalable spring fingers for internal connections on electronics
As the demand for electronic devices continues to increase, so does the need for internal connections within these devices. In response to this growing trend, TE Connectivity, formerly Tyco Electronics, offers scalable spring fingers as well as a complete family of spring fingers.
TE's scalable spring fingers are available in heights from 1.8mm to 3.4mm. Eric Himelright, director of product management, TE, comments: "All these types can be mounted onto one single footprint, enabling the customer to swap the product easily when a design change is required. With the launch of scalable spring fingers, we are prepared to help our customers to reduce design cost as well as accelerate time to market and time to value."
Another important feature of TE's scalable spring fingers is their preload function that nearly doubles the working area of a common spring finger and increases contact force by 0.2N. The product also has a dimple on the contact to enhance reliability. The backward-formed tip prevents the product from hooking by removing the sharp edge. On the back of the scalable spring finger there is a pick-and-place area that supports customer auto-assembly processes. The holes at the bottom of the product increase soldering strength while reducing solder wicking issues.
Besides scalable spring fingers, TE offers a product family of spring fingers in a range of styles and sizes. Currently four styles are available. Their effective heights range from 0.3mm to 6.5mm with widths ranging from 0.8mm to 2.5mm. They all require very limited space on a PCB and accommodate soldering as well as pick-and-place assembly using standard equipment.
Spring fingers, also known as shield fingers or universal ground contacts, have three main uses: they can be used for grounding between a device and a PCB; they provide shielding against vibration from motors, antennas, speakers, and microphones; and they can be used as signal connectors to transfer data as well as a connection for stacking applications between primary and secondary PCBs.
Olive Wu, a product specialist at TE Connectivity, states: "TE's spring fingers are used in various applications ranging from mobile devices and personal computing to home entertainment and industrial equipment." Spring fingers can be used in any small PCB application.
For more information about TE's scalable spring finger and its spring finger product family, go to www.te.com/products/Spring-Fingers?s_cid=2552.
