Abstract:
A configurable electrical circuit element housing used as a building block in prototyping and demonstrating electric circuits. A label ( 10 ) with a circuit element graphic ( 11 ) attaches on an electrically insulated housing top ( 20 ). Underneath is an alternating arrangement of electrically insulated connector guide walls ( 22 ) and guide posts ( 21 ) forming a square-like perimeter surrounding a circuit element ( 40 ). Circuit element leads ( 41 ) attach to bent coil connector binding posts ( 31 ) inside the housing. The bent coil connector binding posts, on sides for which they are installed, are the ends of bent coil connectors ( 30 ). The bent coil connectors bend around the guide posts forming arcs external to the square-like perimeter. The guide walls help form the arcs by pinching the bent coil connectors. The arcs of the bent coil connectors are resilient connectors which interface with similar connectors forming a bent coil connector coupling ( 50 ) interweaving their coil loops.

Description:
FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH 
     Not Applicable 
     SEQUENCE LISTING OR PROGRAM 
     Not Applicable 
     BACKGROUND 
     1. Field of Invention 
     This invention relates to electrical connectors, specifically to such electrical connectors used in electrical circuit elements for prototyping electric circuits by electrical engineers, electronic circuit enthusiasts, and students of electronics. 
     2. Description of Prior Art 
     Electric circuits are typically prototyped by attaching discrete electrical components to a breadboard. Discrete electrical components are commonly referred to as circuit elements and include, but are not limited to, resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transformers, transistors, batteries, light emitting diodes, and wires. As an electric circuit is constructed, a breadboard provides a place to interconnect such circuit elements. A breadboard is typically a printed circuit board, a shorting pin breadboard, or a wire wrap breadboard. Depending on the type of breadboard, circuit elements are attached to the breadboard by soldering, circuit element lead insertion, or wire wrapping. 
     Electrical circuit elements are housed in insulating materials with exposed conducting contacts called leads. The broadest categories of such elements, according to lead type, are through-hole and surface mount. Both of these types of housings are intended for mass production purposes but are also used for prototyping. It would be useful if these circuit elements could be housed in a way that would facilitate faster and easier preproduction processes such as design, development and prototyping of electric circuits. It would also benefit the preproduction processes if the housing was independent of the use of any breadboard. Such independence from breadboards facilitates removal of some prototyping problems associated with typical breadboards. 
     In the case of a breadboard of the printed circuit board variety, an insulated surface is plated with a layout of conducting material interconnecting a plurality of plated through-holes or surface mount pads. Circuit elements are either inserted into the holes or glued into place depending on whether the circuit element is a through-hole or surface mount design. In both cases, the circuit elements are soldered into position. The process of etching a layout in the conducting material and subsequent soldering of circuit elements is time consuming. With surface mount components, the process is especially difficult due to the small sizes of the circuit elements to be soldered. Printed circuit board type of breadboards may also require the use of toxins such as when using lead based solder for soldering or when using certain chemicals required to etch a printed circuit board layout. Additionally, a circuit built using this method almost never resembles a schematic drawing of the same circuit as designed. Such a mismatch between the resulting circuit and the schematic drawing translates into difficulty for a user who needs to test and troubleshoot the resulting circuit. 
     In the case of breadboards that use shorting clips, each connecting wire must be inserted into the proper shorting clip as a circuit is being constructed. The shorting clips are usually very close to each other and the circuit very rarely resembles a schematic drawing of the circuit. After many parts are connected it may be difficult or even impossible to remove devices buried under the wires used to connect the circuit elements. Also, the circuit on this type of breadboard is very difficult to trace for errors. Shorting clips can loose their resiliency after much use. Also, circuit element leads can get worn through readjustment from one circuit prototype to the next. 
     In the case of wire wrapped breadboards, connecting together individual circuit elements is a time consuming process typically requiring a user to wire wrap each lead of each circuit element. A circuit built using this method may have many wires crossing and will most likely not resemble a schematic drawing of the circuit. Circuit elements cannot be removed easily to study the effect of such a removal or demonstrate their function. 
     It would be desirable to facilitate a method of electric circuit construction which would considerably reduce the time needed to construct, test, and modify a prototype circuit. It would further be preferable if such a method depended on a resilient electrical connector. Such a resilient connector would more readily connect to a similar complementary connector in order to join circuit elements together during circuit construction. 
     Conducting helical coils have been used in a subset of electrical connectors. Such coils can be constructed to conform to a variety of shapes when connected in a circuit. Furthermore, such coils can also resiliently preserve a predetermined shape after breaking a connection with a circuit. U.S. Pat. No. 4,810,213 to Chabot (1989) discusses the use of conducting helical coils as a method of maintaining the electrical contact of a connector in certain positions. The turns of coils provide a multiplicity of engaged surfaces acting in parallel which are free to adjust themselves independently to make good electrical contact. However, all of the arrangements which Chabot suggests present only one connector of the mating pair as having a conducting coil with the opposite side of the connection having a solid conducting surface despite the many orientations suggested. 
     Helical conducting coils find application as connectors between substrates. U.S. Pat. No. 5,030,109 to Dery (1991) takes the idea of helical coils as stacking connectors between interconnecting substrates. While he does point out the advantage of redundant conducting paths of the contact of the loops of the coils to circuit pads of the substrates, there is still a dependency of having circuit pads on substrates without any indication of a complementary connector similar to a conducting coil. U.S. Pat. No. 6,666,690 to Ishizuka (2003) reiterates another particular application of conducting coils between substrates with the feature of radial deformation of the coil where the benefit of such deformation is additional pressure for a stronger contact with the connecting substrates. However, there is no similar complementary coil connector to the radial deformed coil implied or suggested. 
     In all of the above cases discussing conducting coil connectors, the application of any conducting coil is only to one side of an electrical connection. There is no mention of any method of interfacing two conducting coils as complementary connectors to each other. It would therefore be beneficial if there was a radial deformed arrangement of conducting coils such that such a conducting coil could be connected with a similar complementary coil. Such an electrical connector would leverage the benefits of a multiplicity of redundant conducting surfaces and make use of radial deformation for a stronger contact both physically and electrically. An electrical connector with the described benefits would largely aid in the building and testing of electric circuits if combined with an appropriate electric circuit element housing and an accompanying method of constructing electric circuits. 
     U.S. Pat. No. 6,449,167 to Seymour (2002) is an attempt at facilitating a method of electric circuit construction which would considerably reduce the time needed to construct, test, and modify a prototype circuit for a production layout, but that invention requires circuit elements housed with magnets which are attracted to a special breadboard. The requirement of magnets can be expensive and can affect some circuit elements due to the presence of the extraneous magnetic fields. While circuit element housings using such a system can be laid out similarly to a schematic drawing of the same circuit, such a system presents confusion without a clear label depicting which circuit element is being placed on the breadboard. For example, transistors with different electrical properties often share the same type of physical housing but transistor leads are often in a reconfigured order. In any such similar case, a user may confuse the leads of a circuit element unwittingly and construct a circuit incorrectly. 
     Another alternative, the SNAP CIRCUITS™ circuit building system, manufactured by Elenco Electronics Inc. of Wheeling, Ill., uses snaps as connectors interconnecting circuit elements. The SNAP CIRCUITS™ system uses a matrix of preset positions on an insulator base grid for supporting placement of circuit elements in housings having the snap connectors. The base grid dictates discrete positions where circuit elements may be placed and can limit the positions of circuit elements. While this approach has circuit elements represented graphically along side the actual components in the pieces that connect with snaps, these pieces do not have uniform housings and so the result can be messy. A circuit constructed using this system may require unintended cleverness on the part of a user who needs to get unaligned sections of a circuit connected. Snaps of different sections of the circuit may be at a different heights and will not meet snaps together of physically adjacent circuit elements without extra snapping interfaces. Considering the above, the circuit constructed by this method may not even look like a layout of an original schematic diagram even though each circuit element housing in the constructed circuit has a graphic depicting the circuit element within or attached to the housing. 
     U.S. patent application 2004/0096812 of Goh (2004) presents a breadboard for educational purposes. The breadboard of Goh is designed to allow circuit elements housed within schematically labeled component blocks to be placed in such a way that the end result looks similar to a circuit schematic diagram. However, necessitating a breadboard is a bulky feature, and the shorting pins of the breadboard will lose resiliency over time. Additionally, the circuit built, whose sum of all the component block labels would look similar to a schematic, is forced to conform to the breadboard. This conformity to the breadboard can result in an awkward arrangement of component blocks whose resulting sum of all the component block labels looks appreciably different than the original circuit schematic diagram. 
     U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,312 to Crawford (1986) is an attempt to use modularly uniformed sized and labeled electric circuit element housings, or units, to build electric circuits. These modular units may be connected by means of joining units next to each other and interconnecting wires to and from various units to build a circuit. However, that invention requires the modular units to be stacked vertically in such a way as to render difficult the swapping in and out of the units. In addition, the connecting wires used to interface one unit with another can get messy by crossing over other connecting wires and obstructing the view of the labels of other units. Finally, the end result is a working electric circuit, but only marginally looking like the complete schematic which is not easily verified by quick visual check. 
     In all of the above cases, circuit element housings of different types of circuit elements vary in size and shape, combine together through a stacking process, or require an intervening breadboard. The variance in shape and the process of stacking circuit elements causes barriers in interfacing circuit elements when trying to construct electrical circuits quickly and with ease. A circuit element that fits in one location may not fit in another location because the space between the places where the leads connect differs in orientation or shape, or removing a circuit element and replacing it with another circuit element may involve significant deconstruction of the original circuit before being able to replace the circuit element. It would be beneficial if there was a configurable or standardized housing that could be used for a standard set of circuit elements and facilitates connections which do not depend on stacking the circuit elements. 
     It is even more desirable if the final layout of a prototyped circuit resembles a schematic drawing diagram of the circuit with increased accuracy while removing dependence on the use of a breadboard or other printed circuit board as the intermediary between the circuit elements either as an arrangement of conductors or simply an insulating spacer. Additionally, if each circuit element had a graphical representation affixed unto itself which corresponded directly it a connector which interfaced with not a wire or a breadboard but a complementary connector of another similarly housed circuit element, then the combination of these circuit elements could be made to look significantly similar if not identical to the schematic diagram of the electrical circuit under construction. Likewise, if circuit element housings were uniformly shaped with connectors that allowed easy swapping in and out of different circuit elements in such housings without stacking such housings, then in general the circuit construction would be easier, faster and look attractive. Additionally, circuit elements used in circuit construction would have reusability for future prototyping. Finally, if such circuit element housings were configured with resilient conducting coil connectors which interface with similar complementary connectors by way of a simple and easy insertion and extraction method, then the circuit construction process would become even easier and faster. 
     It is, therefore, desirable to facilitate an improved method of constructing circuits, which attains the preceding objectives and overcomes most, if not all, of the preceding problems. 
     OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES 
     Accordingly, several objects and advantages of the present invention are to provide an electrical circuit element housing which: 
     (a) has an attractive visual interface depicting a circuit element being housed therein; 
     (b) uses resilient connectors for repeat and frequent use; 
     (c) is of modular design to accommodate many types of circuit elements by configuring the visual interface, the number of connectors in and around the housing, and the circuit element being housed; 
     (d) facilitates temporary markings on the label. Such markings as may be written by a user during the building, testing, or demonstration of a circuit build with a group of similar housings; 
     (e) requires no intermediate breadboard or insulated grid base; 
     (f) is easy and quick to connect and disconnect when constructing an electric circuit using many similar such housings for each of the circuit elements within the circuit; 
     (g) enables variant orientations and interfacings of similarly housed circuit elements; 
     (h) enables an accurate and comprehensive visual depiction of a circuit under construction when combined with similar housings to match a schematic diagram of the same circuit; 
     (i) makes troubleshooting easy for a circuit constructed from many similar such housings; 
     (j) makes the view and access to each circuit element in a circuit constructed of similar such housings unobstructed by the construction of the circuit; 
     (k) makes it easy to find and access test points from a schematic diagram when used with similar housings to construct a circuit; and 
     (l) does not limit the size of a circuit constructed with similarly housed circuit elements due to dependence on a breadboard of limited size and capacity. 
     Further objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings. 
     SUMMARY 
     In accordance with the present invention an electrical circuit element housing comprises an insulating box-like structure, a laminated label on the top of the structure, bent conducting coil connectors on the outside perimeter of the structure and coil binding posts on the inside of the structure, and an opening at the bottom of the structure. Both the internal and external coil connectors for each side are part of the same coil. The laminated label graphic reflects the type of element being housed, and the internal and external connectors align with the label graphic. 
    
    
     
       DRAWINGS 
       Drawing Figures 
         FIG. 1  shows a top view of an electrical circuit element housing depicting a resistor as an example circuit element. 
         FIG. 2  shows a bottom view of an electrical circuit element housing and a resistor as an example circuit element. 
         FIG. 3  shows a top view of an electrical circuit element housing depicting a resistor as the example circuit element and a section line reference for a sectional view in  FIG. 4 . 
         FIG. 4  shows a sectional view from the side of an electrical circuit element housing and a resistor as an example circuit element. 
         FIG. 5  shows a schematic diagram of a sample partial electric circuit. 
         FIG. 6  shows a top view of a group of electrical circuit element housings combined so that a graphical depiction of the housing labels together reflects a schematic diagram of  FIG. 5 . 
     
    
    
     REFERENCE NUMBERS IN DRAWINGS 
     
         
         
           
               10  label 
               11  resistor graphic 
               12  transistor graphic 
               13  three-conductors-tied-together graphic 
               20  insulated housing top 
               21  guide post 
               22  guide wall 
               30  bent coil connector 
               31  bent coil connector binding post 
               40  circuit element 
               41  circuit element lead 
               50  bent coil connector coupling 
           
         
       
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Description 
     FIGS.  1 ,  2 ,  3 , and  4 —Preferred Embodiment 
     A preferred embodiment of the electrical circuit element housing of the present invention is illustrated in  FIG. 1  (top view),  FIG. 2  (bottom view),  FIG. 3  (top view with section line reference for a sectional view), and  FIG. 4  (sectional side view) featuring a resistor as an example. 
       FIG. 1  shows a top view of the electrical circuit element housing of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. A label  10  is displaying a resistor graphic  11 . The label  10  is attached to an insulating housing top  20 . The insulating housing top  20  width is the same as its height from the top view. The insulating housing top  20  is made of an electrically insulating material. In the preferred embodiment, the material is ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic, but any electrically insulating material can be used, such as other plastics, glass, wood, etc. The label  10  is attached by an adhesive to the insulating housing top  20 . Although the preferred embodiment uses an adhesive to attach the label  10  to the insulating housing top  20 , any other form of representing the graphic  11  on the insulating housing top  20  can be used, such as printing the graphic  11  directly on the insulating housing top  20 , etching the graphic  11  on the insulating housing top  20 , forming the graphic  11  as a relief image of the same material as the insulating housing top  20 , etc. 
       FIG. 1  also shows the resistor graphic  11  as a standard graphical depiction of a resistor typically used in schematic diagrams. The resistor graphic  11  has line segments which end at the edge of the graphic  11  and label  10  to coincide with the positions of bent coil connectors  30 . The bent coil connectors  30  are constructed from a conducting resilient material shaped into a helical spring coil which is pinched to form an arc. The bent coil connectors  30  protrude fanned coil loops outward from where the line segments of the resistor graphic  11  end on the label  10  attached to the insulating housing top  20 . The bent coil connectors  30  are also partially covered by the insulating housing top  20 . Although the preferred embodiment features a bent coil as the protruding electrical connector, any electrical connector which can resiliently mate with itself can be used. 
       FIG. 2  shows a bottom view of the electrical circuit element housing of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. Each bent coil connector  30  is formed by pinching the helical spring coil conducting material around a guide post  21 . The degree of bending in the bent coil connector  30  is determined by two guide walls  22  which pinch the coil around the guide post  21 . The guide walls  22  are made of an insulating material. In the preferred embodiment, the guide walls  22  and the guide posts  21  are made from the same insulating material as the insulating housing top  20  and molded together into one insulating body. From the bottom view, the guide walls  22  are an L-like shape, and the guide posts  21  are cylindrical columns. 
       FIG. 2  also shows that there are four locations where the bent coil connectors  30  may be installed on the electrical circuit element housing. For the resistor example, only two of the four possible bent coil connector  30  positions are required and configured to be used.  FIG. 2  also shows the guide posts  21  and the guide walls  22  in alternating positions under the insulating housing top  20 . The resulting alternating placement of guide posts  21  and guide walls  22  is a square-like area where a circuit element  40  is housed. 
       FIG. 2  further shows the example circuit element  40  as a resistor. The circuit element  40  has a number of leads  41  which connect to bent coil connector binding posts  31 . The bent coil connector binding posts  31  are ends of the bent coil connectors  30 . The bent coil connector binding posts  31  are located in the square-like area formed by the alternating guide posts  21  and guide walls  22 . 
     Even though  FIG. 2  shows the bent coil connector binding posts  31  are part of the bent coil connector  30 , there are other possibilities. The bent coil connector  30  can be a separate connector from the bent coil connector binding post  31  with just an electrical connection between them by way of solder, interlacing loops of coils, twisted connecting wires, etc. Each bent coil connector  30  is protruding externally from the resulting square area of the alternating guide posts  21  and guide walls  22 . The bent coil connector  30  is installed on as many sides of the square to match the placement of the circuit element  40  inside the housing. 
       FIG. 3  shows a top view making reference of a location for a sectional view in  FIG. 4  as indicated by section lines  4 - 4 .  FIG. 3  once again illustrates the label  10  with resistor graphic  11  attached to the insulating housing top  20 . The bent coil connectors  30  are aligned with the orientation of the graphic  11 . 
       FIG. 4  shows a sectional view from the side of the preferred embodiment of the present invention with the example resistor as the circuit element  40  being housed. The resistor circuit element  40  has two circuit element leads  41 . Each circuit element lead  41  is inserted between loops of the bent coil connector binding posts  31 . On opposite sides of the guide walls  22  from the bent coil connector binding posts  31  are the rest of bent coil connectors  30  external to the housing.  FIG. 4  also shows height of the housing to accommodate the circuit element  40 . Height of the guide posts  21  and the guide walls  22 , is enough to sufficiently enclose the circuit element  40  and to match loop diameter of the bent coil connectors  30 . The guide posts  21  and guide walls  22  are the same insulating material as the insulating housing top  20 . The label  10  is shown to be attached to the top of the insulating housing top  20 . 
     Three aspects of the present invention are configurable; the circuit element, the graphic, and the number of bent coil connectors. The circuit element can have up to four leads in the preferred embodiment. For each lead of the circuit element being used, a bent coil connector must be positioned in the electrical circuit element housing. Finally, the labeling of the housing needs to have the appropriate graphic representing the circuit element. 
     Operation— FIGS. 5 and 6   
     The manner of using the electrical circuit element housing of the present invention to build a circuit involves a series of steps. Namely, one places a desired electrical circuit element housing of the circuit element wanted on a surface where the circuit is being built. An intended adjoining circuit element in a similar housing is connected by inserting one of its bent coil connectors into the intended bent coil connector of the previous housing. This process is repeated in succession until the circuit is constructed. 
       FIG. 5  shows a sample partial circuit which can be constructed. Each circuit element of the circuit is shown with a graphic. There are two resistor graphics  11 , a transistor graphic  12 , and a three-conductors-tied-together graphic  13 . 
       FIG. 6  shows the four housings used to prototype the sample partial circuit of  FIG. 5 . For each electrical circuit element housing of  FIG. 6 , a label  10  is shown on the insulating housing top  20 . Then, depending on the type of circuit element, the label  10  shows either a resistor graphic  11 , a transistor graphic  12 , or three-conductors-tied-together graphic  13 . The electrical circuit element housings are arranged such that the graphics of all the housings taken together combine to make the schematic diagram depicted in  FIG. 5 . The way the housings are interfaced is through inserting bent coil connectors  30  into adjacent bent coil connectors  30  of nearby electrical circuit element housings. Resulting connections of bent coil connectors  30  are bent coil connector couplings  50 . 
     CONCLUSION, RAMIFICATIONS, AND SCOPE 
     Accordingly, the reader will see that the electrical circuit element housing of the present invention can be used to house a variety of electric circuit elements in a standardized housing with attractive label graphics and resilient connectors, and can be combined with similar such housings to construct electrical circuits easily and conveniently. Furthermore, the electrical circuit element housing has the additional advantages in that 
     (a) when combined with similar such housings, it permits the building of an electric circuit from a schematic diagram; 
     (b) when combined with similar such housings, it permits deriving a schematic diagram from the combined label graphics of all the housings of a constructed electric circuit; 
     (c) when combined with similar such housings, it obviates the need for a breadboard or insulation board for assembling a prototype circuit; 
     (d) when interfaced with similar such housings, it permits easy insertion and extraction of such housings which facilitates ease in building, testing, and troubleshooting; 
     (f) when combined with similar such housings, it permits the resulting circuit to be constructed on the same plane without overlapping housings; 
     (g) it obviates the need for solder to house a circuit element; 
     (h) it does not change the underlying circuit element being housed when the housing is moved; it does not wear down the leads of the circuit element being housed since the leads once installed inside the housing do not change position; 
     (i) it does not require many external wires, if any, when constructing a circuit with similar such housings since wires can also be housed and connected together as a set of such housings; 
     (j) it permits configuring the housing to match the circuit element to the label graphic; and 
     (k) it permits electrical probes and test clips to access test points easily by exposing portions of the connectors between housings of nearby circuit elements. 
     Although the description above contains many specificities, these should not be construed as limiting the scope of the invention but as merely providing illustrations of the presently preferred embodiment of this invention. For example, the shape of the insulated housing from a top view could be any shape that preserves a uniform distribution of connectors. Also, the number of bent coil connectors need not be limited to one per side if more complex circuit elements are to be house with leads that exceed the number described above. Additionally, whole circuits could be housed in a housing which spans in size multiple housings of the present invention formed into a desired shape. For example, a typical amplifying circuit could be placed in a housing that is four by two times bigger, fitted with the needed connectors, and configured with the appropriate label graphic. 
     Thus the scope of the invention should be determined by the appended claims and their legal equivalents, rather than by the examples given.