| Market competition of electrical connector industry is increasingly fierce.The electrical connector manufacturing industry has entered a meager profit era,especially for consumer connectors.Many enterprises have chosen to control and reduce product costs in order to continuously enhance the competitiveness.Using cheaper material without lowering down product reliability is one of the approach to reduce product cost.Copper Clad steel(CCS)is a composite material made by cladding the copper layer on the steel.The steel core provides good mechanical strength and the cladded copper ensures electrical conductivity as well as corrosion resistance.CCS now is broadly used in telecommunication cable and power cables because of its price advantage to copper and copper alloys.This paper describes the attempts and opportunities to replace expensive copper alloys with copper clad steel as electrical connector contacts.Key characteristics of copper clad steel which are related to connector performance,such as mechanical strength,electrical properties,bendability,wear resistance,corrosion resistance as well as stamping and plating properties are studied.Reliability test result of CCS made AV Jack mobile phone 10 connector and P2 printer connector indicated in those applications copper clad steel is able to achieve comparative performance to copper alloy,such as titanium copper,phosphor bronze as connector contact base metal. |
