Common problems with insulated terminals

Insulated terminals are very common in our life. The contact part of the conductive part of the terminal must be conductive and reliable. Insulation must be reliable where the insulation part is not conductive. There are three common fatal failure modes of insulated terminals.

Here is the content:

• Poor contact

• Insulation fault

• Fixed fault

Poor contact

The metal conductor inside the insulated terminals is the core part of the terminal, which transmits voltage, current, or signals from the external wire or cable to the contact corresponding to the matching connector. Therefore, contacts must have reasonable structure, not easily loose, and have good electrical conductivity. Due to unreasonable structural design of contact parts, wrong material selection, poor processing, rough surface, unreasonable surface treatment process, improper assembly, bad storage and use environment, and improper operation and use, will cause poor contact in the contact parts and matching parts of the insulated terminal.

Insulation fault

The function of the insulator is to keep the contacts in the correct position and to insulate each other between the contacts and between the contacts and the shell. Therefore, insulating parts must have the performance of the electrical transmission, mechanical properties, and process easy to form performance. Especially with the wide use of insulated terminals, insulator wall thickness is getting thinner and thinner. This puts forward more stringent requirements on the material, precision, and molding process of the insulation terminal. As metal railings are attached to the surface of the insulator, there is dust on the surface. If the insulator is polluted and wet, the moisture will affect the deposition of organic matter and the fusion of water film on the surface of harmful gas adsorption film to form ionic conductive channels. These ion channels absorb moisture, which ages the mold and insulation, causing a short circuit. Then appear leakage, breakdown, insulation resistance low insulation fault phenomenon.

Fixed fault

Insulators not only insulate but also provide protection, installation, and fixation of contact points. Bad fixation and light influence contact reliability resulting in an instant power failure, serious is the insulated terminal disintegration. Disintegration refers to the abnormal separation between plug and socket, pin and socket caused by the unreliable structure of the insulated terminal in the plugged state due to material, design, process, and other reasons. It will cause serious consequences for power transmission and signal control interruption of the control system.

Due to unreliable design, material selection error, improper selection of molding process, heat treatment, mold, assembly, welding, and other process quality is poor, assembly is not in place will cause poor fixation.

The parts of the terminal are directly related to the quality of the insulated terminal, they determine the excellent problem of the insulating performance and conductive performance of the terminal. The failure of any one part will fail the entire system product. The bitter lessons learned at home and abroad are profound. Prevention is the goal. The analysis is the foundation. In a sense, failure prevention is more important than failure analysis. It has more practical significance to ensure the quality and reliability of insulated terminals.