ELECTRICAL CONNECTOR SYSTEM WITH ORTHOGONAL CONTACT TAILS

摘要

Disclosed are electrical connectors and methods of assembling an electrical connector having "standard" (i.e., with electrical contacts having in-line tails), jogged (i.e., with electrical contacts having jogged tails but not connected orthogonally to another connector through a substrate), and/or "orthogonal" (i.e., with electrical contacts having jogged tails that are used in an orthogonal application) leadframe assemblies in the same connector. This provides the flexibility of using some of the available contacts in an orthogonal application and, at the same time, having remaining contacts available for routing on the midplane PCB. Though this could be done using only orthogonal leadframe assemblies, the combination of standard leadframe assemblies with orthogonal leadframe assemblies creates additional spacing between the PCB vias, so that signal traces can be more easily routed on the midplane PCB.