Connector Design

The above picture shows a “Jones” or “Beau” plug, these are commonly used in high amperage applications, our customer approached us with two problems, long lead times and cost – which is a very normal for some specialised parts.

We had to re-design the connector in two ways, firstly to overmould the existing product to give a tamperproof product where the end customer could not interfere with the part when in use and also the fitting of a large ferrite core for EMI ( Electromagnetic Interference ) filtering within the mould which saved on a previously separate process.

Secondly to design a more cost effective solution, to reduce the cost we decided to use a crimp terminal which meant we could automate this part of process then overmould. This option involved a 3 part moulding, the initial mould was in the form of a bridge, and this was used to locate all the pins in the correct position prior to overmoulding. The next mould was to encapsulate the bridge and all the wires and pins, finally the overmould which had to incorporate the customer’s part numbers date and batch code information.

The final product was a great success as it covered all the customers’ requirements in both cost and delivery as all component parts were stocked by Cable First as standard products we could turn the part around in days if required.

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