Electrical connector and method of fabricating a wire harness using the connector

摘要

An electrical connector for mechanically joining a plurality of wires to a plurality of other electrical components and for providing low resistance electrical paths between predetermined ones of the plurality of wires and preselected ones of the plurality of other electrical components. The connector includes an insulative housing having a front wall, a back wall and a plurality of spaced barrier walls extending between the front wall and back wall to define an array of cavities extending through the housing. The connector also includes a plurality of metallic terminal elements each of which has a wire terminating portion and a portion for receiving another electrical component with one terminal element preloaded into each of the housing cavities prior to wiring of the connector. The wire terminating portion has an open-ended elongate wire-receiving slot having a width less than the diameter of the conductor in the wire to be terminated in the wire terminating portion so that in response to the insertion of the wire laterally of its axis into the slot, the insulation of the wire is removed. The wire terminating portion further includes an entrance adjoining the slot and of greater width than the slot to guide the wire into the slot. The housing and/or the terminal element has holding means for mechanically holding each wire in alignment with the entrance to the slot corresponding to that wire prior to insertion of the wire into the slot whereby after positioning of the wires into the holding means and prior to insertion of the wires into the slots, the connector can be physically moved without dissociation of the wires from their corresponding slots.