A widely used type of electrical connector receptacle commonly is referred to as a "jack". Such connectors are widely used in the telephone industry and with other consumer products which require relatively small electrical connectors. Such connectors or jacks typically include a dielectric housing having a front mating end with a plug-receiving opening. A plurality of terminals are mounted in the housing and have spring contact portions extending in a cantilevered fashion into the plug-receiving opening. The terminals have lead portions, such as solder tails, which project from a terminating end of the housing remote from the mating end. Some form of means are provided to hold the lead or tail portions of the terminals in precise locating positions for insertion into holes in a printed circuit board or for surface connection to contact pads on the board.
Heretofore, the lead or tail portions of the terminals have been located and held to the connector housing by many different arrangements or methods. Such methods including melting the walls of terminal-receiving channels with a heating element or an ultrasonic horn to cause the dielectric (plastic) material of the housing alongside the channels to flow and solidify over the terminal portions. Another method involves forcing barbs projecting laterally from edges of the terminal portions into the channel walls, or to simply force enlarged edge portions of the terminals into the channels with an interference fit. Portions of the channel walls also have been formed over the terminal portions without the application of heat, e.g. "cold staking" to flow plastic material over the edges of the terminal portions.
All of the above manufacturing methods of the prior art suffer from various disadvantages or problems. For instance, while melting processes create fairly strong retention joints, these processes are relatively expensive, requiring expensive machines to melt the plastic housing either by a heating element or an ultrasonic horn. While the use of barbs or enlarged terminal edge portions forced into an interference fit within the channels is an inexpensive alternative, these methods result in considerably weaker retention joints between the terminal portions and the housing.
Cold staking of the channel walls over the edges of the terminals creates a strong joint with the terminal portions, but cold staking processes have problems in accurately locating the lead or tail portions of the terminals. In particular, typically the tail portions first are seated into their respective channels. The material of the channel walls then are forced or cold staked over the lead portions. During the cold staking process, significant forces are created in the bases of the channel walls causing some material from the base to flow between the terminal and the housing thereby causing the terminals to become slightly dislocated away from the housing from the bottom of the channels, resulting in inaccurately located lead portions which are misaligned with respect to the holes or circuit traces on the printed circuit board.
The present invention is directed to solving the various problems and overcoming the various disadvantages of the prior art enumerated above.