A Demanding Process

Medical applications are not the only projects that require high levels of precision and accuracy. Electronic products such as connectors and insulators also demand exact processing in order to ensure proper fit and function. Parts must mate/unmate easily and withstand several cycles of such. One of our multi-national electrical customers manufactures a broad range of interconnect products that fit this bill exactly.

Project Background

One particular part we provide for this customer is an insulator cap containing 1,658 tiny holes in a three square-inch surface area. The holes are .020" in diameter and their locations must fall within a .004" tolerance from the datum point in true position. At the same time, the surface is 1/32 of an inch thick and must be held completely flat. To avoid excessive shrinkage and warp these parts were molded out of an LCP (Vectra E130i™) which comes with its own challenges when filling thin-walled parts.

Challenges

Manufacturing the molds for this part required a significant amount of hole popping and wire EDMing as well as close-tolerance grinding. Successfully molding these parts required a knowledge of high flowing and low viscosity materials like Vectra E130i™ LCP. Properly inspecting the finished parts requires our automated vision system to verify the accuracy of each and every hole.

Results

Matrix produces a variety of different insulator caps for this particular customer. Our experience and technical abilities afford them a certain confidence when outsourcing these demanding projects to Matrix.