JP2009021072A - Flexible flat cable and electronic equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an FFC capable of retaining sufficient flexible characteristics even if an electronic equipment having slide mechanism in a space-saving space is used. <P>SOLUTION: In the FFC 1 which has a cable part 7 where a plurality of conductors 3 arranged nearly in parallel are pinched by an insulator 5 from both sides and laminated, and in which terminal parts 9, 11 where the plurality of conductors 3 are exposed at both end parts of this cable part 7 are installed, it is made a layered aggregate part 19 in which rows of the plurality of conductors 3 of the cable part 7 are divided into the plurality thereof and made as a divided cable part 7A, and in which the plurality of the respective divided cable parts 7A is layered and aggregated in a state of being twisted by nearly 90° against an arrangement direction of the conductors at the terminal parts 9, 11. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a flexible flat cable that can maintain sufficient bending characteristics even when wiring between connectors sliding in a space-saving space, and an electronic apparatus using such a flexible flat cable.

  In recent years, electronic devices typified by mobile phones have been rapidly reduced in size, weight, and thickness. Among them, a flexible flat cable (hereinafter referred to as “FFC”) having flexibility is often used.

  Referring to FIGS. 4A and 4B, generally, a conventional FFC 101 has a plurality of flat conductors 103 arranged in parallel and a plurality of flat conductors 103 laminated from the upper and lower sides. The insulator 105 includes a reinforcing plate 107 that regulates the terminal thickness to a thickness necessary to be inserted into the connector and reinforces the terminal. Further, terminal portions 109 exposing the plurality of flat conductors 103 are formed at both ends of the FFC 101.

  When the FFC 101 is used in, for example, a printer as an electronic device having a slide mechanism, the terminal portion 109 at one end is connected to a fixed substrate, and the terminal portion 109 at the other end is connected to a print head unit that slides. The At this time, generally, the wiring form having the best sliding characteristics is that the FFC 101 is bent in a U shape. Here, the width direction of the FFC 101 is a direction orthogonal to the direction from the fixed substrate to the print head.

  FIGS. 5A and 5B are general U-shaped bending test methods performed to confirm the bending characteristics of the FFC 101 when the FFC 101 is used in the electronic device 111 having a slide mechanism. This is done in compliance. The FFC 101 is bent and installed in a U shape between a fixed plate 113 and a movable plate 115 arranged in parallel to each other, and is fixed to the fixed plate 113 and the movable plate 115 by fixing tools 117 and 119 at arbitrary positions. Is done. The movable plate 115 slides at a prescribed stroke distance of, for example, 50 mm and at a reciprocating speed of, for example, 60 times / minute. Then, the number of times until the FFC 101 is disconnected is counted. A wiring space 121 is formed between the fixed plate 113 and the movable plate 115. As shown in FIG. 5, the wiring space 121 has a bending diameter D of the FFC 101, and a half of the wiring space 121 has a bending radius R.

  As described above, when the FFC 101 is fixed to the fixed plate 113 and the movable plate 115 and connected to a connector (not shown), the number of sliding times (U-shaped bending characteristics) mainly depends on the bending radius R of the U-shaped portion of the FFC 101 and the FFC 101. It is known that it depends on the thickness T of the rectangular conductor 103 used in the above. That is, as the bending radius R is larger, the bending characteristics are improved. Similarly, if the thickness T of the flat conductor 103 is thin, the bending characteristics are improved.

Therefore, in the FFC 101 of Patent Document 1, the thickness T of the flat conductor 103 of only the bent portion of the FFC 101 is thinned to improve the bending characteristics. In addition, the FFC 101 of Patent Document 2 improves the bending characteristics of the FFC 101 by using an alloy having excellent mechanical characteristics as a metal material for the flat conductor 103.
Japanese Patent No. 3037444 JP 2002-25353 A

  By the way, in the conventional FFC 101, the bending characteristic is improved as the bending radius R is increased. Similarly, the bending characteristic is improved when the thickness T of the flat conductor 103 is thin. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to adjust the bending radius R and the thickness T of the flat conductor 103. However, since the thickness T of the flat conductor 103 is determined by the allowable current of the flat conductor 103 and the thickness of the rolling process, the designer mainly adjusts the bending radius R to define the number of sliding times. Yes.

  For this reason, the wiring space 121 requires a certain distance or more, which is a design obstacle to space saving of the electronic device 111. That is, if the FFC 101 is arranged in a U-shaped bent state in a narrow wiring space 121, the bending characteristics are degraded. Therefore, a wiring configuration that enables the use of the FFC 101 is required even for an electronic device having a slide structure that has been considered difficult to use due to the original mechanical characteristics of the FFC 101.

  An object of the present invention is to provide an FFC that can maintain sufficient bending characteristics even if wiring is performed between connectors that slide in a space-saving space, and an electronic device using such an FFC.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the flexible flat cable of the present invention has a cable portion in which a plurality of conductors arranged substantially in parallel are sandwiched by insulators from both sides, and the cable portions are provided at both ends of the cable portion. In a flexible flat cable provided with a terminal portion exposing the plurality of conductors,
The cable portion is divided into a plurality of divided cable portions each including a row of a plurality of conductors, and each divided cable portion is laminated in a state of being twisted by approximately 90 ° with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the terminal portion. It is characterized by being.

An electronic device according to the present invention includes a fixed portion having a fixed-side connector, and a movable portion having a movable-side connector that is arranged at a predetermined interval with respect to the fixed portion and can reciprocate in one direction. And a flexible flat cable that is arranged within the interval between the fixed part and the movable part and that bends the cable part in a U-shape to electrically connect the fixed side connector and the movable side connector.
The flexible flat cable has a cable portion in which a plurality of conductors arranged substantially in parallel are sandwiched and sandwiched from both sides by an insulator, and the cable portion is connected to the fixed connector and the movable connector at both ends. The first and second terminal portions are provided, and the cable portion is divided into a plurality of divided cable portions formed of a plurality of conductor rows, and each divided cable portion is approximately 90 with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the terminal portion. ° It is laminated and assembled in a twisted state,
The width direction of each divided cable portion is substantially parallel to the direction from the fixed portion to the movable portion, and this divided cable portion is bent and attached in a U shape.

  As will be understood from the means for solving the problems as described above, according to the flexible flat cable of the present invention, after the cable portion is formed into a divided cable portion obtained by dividing an arbitrary conductor row into a plurality, Since each of the plurality of split cable portions is stacked by being twisted by approximately 90 ° with respect to the conductor arrangement direction at the terminal portions at both ends, the stacked assembly is performed even if the space between the terminal portions at both ends is narrow. If the part is within the interval, the width direction of each divided cable is made substantially parallel to the direction from the fixed part to the movable part, and the bent and gathered parts are bent into a U-shape, thereby bending radius. Can be wired to an electronic device that slides at a space-saving interval.

  According to the electronic device of the present invention, by using the flexible flat cable, sufficient bending characteristics can be maintained even if the flexible flat cable is wired in a slide mechanism that slides in a space-saving space.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  Referring to FIGS. 2A and 2B, a flexible flat cable 1 (hereinafter simply referred to as “FFC”) according to this embodiment is, for example, a flat conductor as a plurality of conductors arranged in parallel. 3 is laminated with an insulator 5 from both upper and lower sides. Both ends of the cable portion 7 are provided with first and second terminal portions 9 and 11 in which the insulator 5 is peeled and the plurality of flat conductors 3 are exposed. The first and second terminal portions 9 and 11 are provided with a reinforcing plate 13 for defining a terminal thickness required for insertion into the connector and reinforcing the terminal. The plurality of conductors are not limited to the flat conductor 3 described above, and may be conductors having a circular cross section or other cross sectional shapes.

  In this embodiment, the pitch between the rectangular conductors 3 is, for example, 0.5 mm, the number of cores of the rectangular conductors 3 is 12, and the fourth and fifth rectangular conductors from the upper end in FIG. 3 and between the eighth and ninth flat conductors 3, a region A in which no single flat conductor 3 is provided. The width of the cable portion 7 is 7.5 mm.

  Referring to FIG. 1A, in this embodiment, a slit 15 is provided in the cable portion 7 excluding the terminal portion in the region A where the flat conductor 3 is not provided with respect to the FFC 1 in FIG. The positions of the slits 15 are 2.5 mm and 5.0 mm from the upper end in FIG. Therefore, the divided cable portion 7A divided into three is formed at the position of the slit 15 in FIG.

  Next, as shown in FIG. 1B, each of the three divided cable portions 7A is twisted and rotated by approximately 90 ° with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the first and second terminal portions 9 and 11, respectively. Then, as shown in FIGS. 1 (C) and (D), the laminated assembly portion 19 is formed by laminating and assembling the three divided cable portions 7A so as to overlap each other and fixing with a fixing tool 17 such as an adhesive tape. It is formed. Therefore, in this embodiment, the width W of the split cable portion 7A of the FFC 1 (that is, the width of the stacked assembly portion 19) is, for example, 2.5 mm.

  In this embodiment, the row of the plurality of flat conductors 3 in the cable portion 7 is divided into three. For example, after providing a region A in which there are no three flat conductors 3 to be divided into four, When the slit 15 is inserted and divided into four, the width W of the split cable portion 7A of the FFC 1 becomes smaller than 2.0 mm, for example, in a state where the three rectangular conductors 3 are contained in one split cable portion 7A. In this way, the width W of the split cable portion 7A of the FFC 1 can be changed depending on the number of divisions.

  Next, electronic device 21 equipped with FFC 1 according to the embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  Referring to FIGS. 3A and 3B, the electronic device 21 includes, for example, a fixed plate 23 as a fixed portion, and is disposed substantially parallel to the fixed plate 23 with a predetermined interval therebetween, and For example, a movable plate 25 is provided as a movable portion that reciprocates in one direction with respect to the fixed plate 23. An interval between the fixed plate 23 and the movable plate 25 is a wiring space 27.

  The FFC 1 according to the above-described embodiment is installed by being bent in a U shape within the interval between the fixed plate 23 and the movable plate 25 arranged in parallel as described above. The fixed plate 23 is provided with a fixed connector 29 along the plane of the fixed plate 23. A movable connector 31 is provided on the movable plate 25 along the plane of the movable plate 25. The first terminal portion 9 of the FFC 1 is connected and fixed to the fixed side connector 29 of the fixed plate 23, and the second terminal portion 11 of the FFC 1 is connected and fixed to the movable side connector 31 of the movable plate 25. In this way, the fixed connector 29 and the movable connector 31 are electrically connected by the FFC 1.

  The stacked assembly portion 19 that is stacked and assembled in a state of being twisted by approximately 90 ° with respect to the arrangement direction of the conductors in the first and second terminal portions 9 and 11 of the FFC 1 is a direction GD in which the width direction extends from the fixed plate 23 to the movable plate 25. Are arranged in the same direction. The stacked assembly portion 19 is mounted between the fixed plate 23 and the movable plate 25 while being bent in a U shape in a direction along the plates 23 and 25.

  3B, in order to obtain a sufficient U-shaped bending radius R of the stacked assembly portion 19, the terminal positions of the FFC 1, that is, the positions of the first and second terminal portions 9 and 11 are used. Is fixed by shifting in the vertical direction in FIG. FIG. 3B reproduces the slide state of the electronic device 21 having a slide mechanism in which the movable plate 25 reciprocates in the slide direction indicated by the arrow in the drawing.

When the FFC 1 is wired as described above, the fixed position of the first terminal portion 9 and the movable position of the second terminal portion 11 of the FFC 1 are in a direction orthogonal to the sliding direction of the movable plate 25, that is, FIG. Since the U-shaped bending radius R of the FFC 1 can be arbitrarily set, the bending radius R can be increased to improve the bending characteristics. On the other hand, since the wiring space 27 is an interval between the fixed plate 23 and the movable plate 25, the wiring space 27 can be made smaller as the width dimension of the stacked assembly portion 19 of the FFC 1 is smaller. In this embodiment, since the width dimension of the stacked assembly portion 19 of the FFC 1 is 2.5 mm, the minimum value of the wiring space 27 is 2.5 mm.

[Example]
Next, FFC1 of the Example based on FIG.1 (C) and (D) is produced, Furthermore, in order to compare with this Example, FFC101 of the comparative example based on FIG. 4 (A) and (B) is used. In the example and the comparative example, the electronic device 21 that is created and mounted with the FFC 1 based on FIGS. 3A and 3B and the electronic device 111 that is mounted with the FFC 101 based on FIG. The wiring space and the number of bendings were compared. The resulting data is shown in Table 1.

  The configuration of the FFCs 1 and 101 used in the experiment is that the pitch between the flat conductors 3 is 0.5 mm, the number of cores of the flat conductors 3 is 12, the total length of the FFCs 1 and 101 is 200 mm, and the lead portion (first 1, the second terminal portions 9 and 11 and the terminal portion 109) are 4 mm, and the lengths of the reinforcing plates 13 and 107 are 8 mm. Moreover, the width | variety of the flat conductors 3 and 103 is 0.3 mm, the thickness is 0.035 mm, and a material is a tin plating flat angle soft copper wire. The insulators 5 and 105 are PET having a thickness of 25 μm and are laminated with a thickness of 30 μm by a polyester-based adhesive.

Moreover, the U-shaped bending test method is performed in accordance with the IPC method. The movable plate 25 slides at a reciprocating speed of 100 times / 1 minute at a prescribed stroke distance of 50 mm, and counts the number of times until the FFCs 1 and 101 are disconnected. In addition, the N number of FFC1 and 101 as a sample of the Example used for this test and a comparative example is 10 each.

  As can be seen from Table 1 above, when the wiring space of the example and the comparative example is the same 6 mm, the bending radius R of the comparative example is inevitably 3 mm, but the bending radius R of the example is 5 mm. As a result, the bending characteristic in the example could be improved to about 20 times that in the comparative example. Note that the bending radius R of the embodiment is not limited to 5 mm, but can be increased beyond that.

  In the above-described embodiment, the general FFC 1 structure is shown. However, the pitch between the flat conductors 3, the structure of the FFC 1 such as the conductor 3, the insulator 5, the reinforcing plate 13, and the number of conductors 3 to be divided are shown. Is not particularly limited.

  As described above, after the cable portion 7 of the FFC 1 is divided into the number of arbitrary rectangular conductors 3 to form a plurality of divided cable portions 7A, each of the plurality of divided cable portions 7A is divided into the first and first pieces, respectively. Since the laminated assembly part 19 is formed by twisting and stacking approximately 90 ° with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the two terminal parts 9 and 11, a wiring space 27 to which the first and second terminal parts 9 and 11 are connected is formed. If the width W of the stacked assembly portion 19 falls within the interval, the stacked assembly portion 19 is moved in the direction parallel to the direction GD from the fixed portion to the movable portion. By bending in a letter shape, the bending radius R can be sufficiently secured, and the fixed plate 23 and the movable plate 25 that slide in the space-saving space can be wired.

  Therefore, by using the FFC 1 of this embodiment, sufficient bending characteristics can be maintained even if the FFC 1 is used in the electronic device 21 having a slide mechanism that slides in a space-saving space.

(A)-(D) show the manufacturing process of FFC of embodiment of this invention, (C) is a top view of FFC of this embodiment, (D) is a side view of (C) It is. (A) is a top view which shows FFC before manufacturing to FFC of embodiment of this invention, (B) is sectional drawing of (A). 1A and 1B show an outline of a slide mechanism of an electronic apparatus equipped with the FFC according to the embodiment of FIG. 1, wherein FIG. 1A is a top view and FIG. 1B is a front view. (A) is a top view which shows the conventional FFC, (B) is sectional drawing of (A). 4A and 4B schematically illustrate a slide mechanism of an electronic device equipped with the conventional FFC of FIG. 4, wherein FIG. 5A is a top view and FIG. 5B is an explanatory diagram illustrating a slide operation.

Explanation of symbols

1 FFC (flexible flat cable)
3 Flat conductor (conductor)
5 Insulator 7 Cable part 7A Split cable part 9 First terminal part
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 11 2nd terminal part 13 Reinforcement board 15 Slit 17 Fixture 19 Laminated assembly part 21 Electronic device 23 Fixing plate (fixing part)
25 Movable plate (movable part)
27 Wiring space 29 Fixed side connector 31 Movable side connector A Region R Bending radius W Dividing cable portion 7A width GD Distance direction

Claims (2)

In a flexible flat cable having a cable portion in which a plurality of conductors arranged substantially in parallel are sandwiched and sandwiched from both sides with an insulator, and terminal portions in which the plurality of conductors are exposed are provided at both ends of the cable portion. ,
The cable portion is divided into a plurality of divided cable portions each including a row of a plurality of conductors, and each divided cable portion is laminated in a state of being twisted by approximately 90 ° with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the terminal portion. A flexible flat cable characterized by being made. A fixed portion provided with a fixed-side connector; a movable portion provided with a movable-side connector that is disposed at a predetermined interval with respect to the fixed portion and can be reciprocated in one direction; and the fixed portion and the movable portion In an electronic device comprising: a flexible flat cable that is disposed within the interval and bends a cable portion in a U shape to electrically connect the fixed side connector and the movable side connector.
The flexible flat cable has a cable portion in which a plurality of conductors arranged in parallel are sandwiched from both sides with an insulator and laminated, and the cable portion is connected to the fixed connector and the movable connector at both ends. The first and second terminal portions are provided, and the cable portion is divided into a plurality of divided cable portions including a plurality of conductor rows, and each divided cable portion is approximately 90 with respect to the conductor arrangement direction in the terminal portion. ° It is laminated and assembled in a twisted state,
An electronic apparatus, wherein a width direction of each divided cable portion is substantially parallel to a direction from the fixed portion to the movable portion, and the divided cable portion is bent and attached in a U shape.

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