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Pins get to the point
When a supplier of moulded electrical components for diesel engines needed to manufacture a precision plug assembly using wire pins, it turned to the design and application engineers at William Hughes Ltd for a cost-effective solution.
The special plug is used in the engine management system and the components needed to be resistant to vibration and high temperatures, yet provide reliable electrical contact. Design of the plug is based on four nickel silver pins about 75mm long which need to be positioned very accurately in the moulding. Each pin is supplied to Hughes as a straight turned part and it is Hughes’ role to apply two high-accuracy bends to each pin to ensure that the tails of the pins are perfectly aligned when they are inserted in the moulding. To achieve the right result, each of the four pins has to be bent in a slightly different way.
The solution involved the design of a special machine that can work with the wire pins, allowing adjustments to cater for the varying characteristics. Four interlinked machines are used to produce the pins in sets.