Method of determining the quality of a crimped electrical connection
First Claim
1. In a method of determining the quality of the crimp of an electrical terminal crimped onto a wire utilizing crimping apparatus which includes a press having a base and a ram arranged for opposing relative reciprocating motion, said base and ram each carrying a mating half of a crimping die set, the steps comprising:
- (a) placing a terminal and wire in crimping position within said crimping apparatus;
(b) causing at least one of said base and said ram to undergo relative motion so that said die set engages, crimps said terminal onto said wire, and disengages;
(c) during said engaging, crimping, and disengaging of step (b), simultaneously measuring both the distance between the terminal engaging portions of said die set and the force applied to said terminal by said die set for a plurality of different relative positions of said mating halves of said die set thereby defining a plurality of measured force and position data element pairs having a force value and a position value respectively;
(d) providing a plurality of standard data element pairs corresponding to a known quality of crimp; and
(e) relating selected ones of said plurality of measured data element pairs to corresponding ones of said plurality of standard data element pairs thereby determining the quality of crimp of said crimped terminal.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention is a method of determining the quality of a crimped electrical connection by collecting force and displacement data during the crimping cycle and comparing that data with data that represents standard crimped connections of known high quality. Of the collected data, selected portions are related to corresponding portions of the standard data and, if a deviation exists of more than a specific amount, a reject signal is generated and displayed to the machine operator. The standard data is continually updated to account for slowly changing environmental conditions that occur over a relatively long period of operation.
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Citations
15 Claims
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1. In a method of determining the quality of the crimp of an electrical terminal crimped onto a wire utilizing crimping apparatus which includes a press having a base and a ram arranged for opposing relative reciprocating motion, said base and ram each carrying a mating half of a crimping die set, the steps comprising:
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(a) placing a terminal and wire in crimping position within said crimping apparatus; (b) causing at least one of said base and said ram to undergo relative motion so that said die set engages, crimps said terminal onto said wire, and disengages; (c) during said engaging, crimping, and disengaging of step (b), simultaneously measuring both the distance between the terminal engaging portions of said die set and the force applied to said terminal by said die set for a plurality of different relative positions of said mating halves of said die set thereby defining a plurality of measured force and position data element pairs having a force value and a position value respectively; (d) providing a plurality of standard data element pairs corresponding to a known quality of crimp; and (e) relating selected ones of said plurality of measured data element pairs to corresponding ones of said plurality of standard data element pairs thereby determining the quality of crimp of said crimped terminal. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. In a method of determining the quality of the crimp of an electrical terminal crimped onto a wire, the steps:
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(a) during the crimping of said terminal onto said wire, measuring the amount of deformation of said terminal and simultaneously measuring the corresponding amount of force required to effect said deformation for a plurality of different amounts of said deformation, thereby defining a plurality of measured force and deformation data element pairs having a force value and a terminal deformation value; (b) providing a plurality of standard data element pairs corresponding to a known quality of crimp; and (c) relating selected ones of said plurality of measured data element pairs to corresponding ones of said plurality of standard data element pairs;
thereby determining the quality of crimp of said crimped terminal. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15)
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Specification