Circuit board and connector.

摘要

A zero insertion force printed circuit board edge connector ensures electrical connection under a worst-case accumulation of mechanical tolerances while precluding the short circuiting of connector contact pins in the absence of a board within the connector by having long contact pins (108) and short contact pins (110), arranged so that the contact regions of the contact pins lie in at least two horizontal planes and no long pin lies opposite nor adjacent to a short pin. When the connector is actuated in the absence of a printed circuit board, the short pins will move under the opposing long pins but the pins will not short circuit. During actuation, the pins will move more than half way across the connector opening thereby guaranteeing connection to any card regardless of dimensional tolerance or of card position within the connector opening. A complementary circuit board has correspondingly located pointed contact pads (107) enclosing elliptical areas (201) of high probability of contact of a size based on summing manufacturing tolerances in two orthogonal directions, and permitting intermeshing of the rows on each side of the board to provide denser packing.