Patent Publication Number: US-9853398-B2

Title: Plug connector and electronic assembly

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Field of the Invention 
     The application relates to an electrical connector, and particularly relates to a plug connector and an electronic assembly using the same. 
     Description of Related Art 
     A universal serial bus (USB) is a standard connector interface, and based on a high convenience of plug and play thereof, the USB is widely applied to various electronic products, for example, computer hosts, notebooks, flash disks, external storage hard disk drives, etc. In order to cope with a thinning tendency of volumes of the electronic products, a specification of the current USB is evolved from a standard USB to a mini USB with a smaller volume, and even evolved to a micro USB with a volume smaller than that of the mini USB, so as to facilitate applying to the thinned electronic products. 
     Taking a plug connector of the micro USB as an example, the plug connector generally includes an insulation body, a plurality of terminals fixed in the insulation body and a metal housing wrapping the insulation body. However, during a process of coupling the plug connector to a receptacle connector, an edge of the metal housing of the plug connector is liable to scratch a decorative housing of an electronic apparatus, which is unexpected to a user or a maintenance personnel, and may particularly increase a maintenance cost for maintenance. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The application is directed to a plug connector, which is avoided to scratch a decorative housing of an electronic apparatus. 
     The application is directed to an electronic assembly, in which a plug connect is avoided to scratch a decorative housing of an electronic apparatus. 
     The application provides a plug connector, which is adapted to be connected to a receptacle connector. The plug connector includes an insulation body, a plurality of terminals and a metal housing. The terminals are fixed in the insulation body. The metal housing wraps the insulation body and the terminals and has a mating end. The insulation body and the metal housing construct a slot, which is adapted to couple a tongue portion of the receptacle connector. These terminals extend to the slot. The insulation body extends outward to the mating end from internal of the metal housing to cover at least a part of the mating end. 
     The application provides an electronic assembly including an electronic apparatus and the aforementioned plug connector. 
     According to the above description, in the application, the insulation body of the plug connector extends to cover the mating end of the metal housing, such that the mating end does not directly contact the decorative housing of the electronic apparatus, so as to avoid a situation that the mating end of the metal housing scratch the decorative housing of the electronic apparatus. 
     To make the above features and advantages of the application more comprehensible, several embodiments accompanied with drawings are described in detail as follows. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a top perspective view of a plug connector according to an embodiment of the application. 
         FIG. 2  is a bottom perspective view of the plug connector of  FIG. 1 . 
         FIG. 3  is a partial cross-sectional view of the plug connector of  FIG. 1 . 
         FIG. 4  is a perspective view of the plug connector of  FIG. 1  to be inserted into a receptacle connector of an electronic apparatus. 
     
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS 
     Referring to  FIG. 1 ,  FIG. 2  and  FIG. 3 , a plug connector  100  is adapted to be coupled to a receptacle connector (for example, a plug connector  52  shown in  FIG. 4 ) of a corresponding specification. A specification of the plug connector  100  can be a standard USB, a mini USB or a micro USB, and a type of each USB may include type A, type B or type C. However, in other embodiments, the application can also be applied to other plug connectors with a similar structure. In the following content, the plug connector of the micro USB is taken as an example for description. 
     The plug connector  100  includes an insulation body  110 , a plurality of terminals  120  and a metal housing  130 . The terminals  120  are fixed in the insulation body  110 , and a used for contacting terminals of the receptacle connector of the corresponding specification. The metal housing  130  wraps the insulation body  110  and the terminals  120 , and constructs a slot  140  together with the insulation body  110 , where the slot  140  is adapted to couple a tongue portion of the receptacle connector (for example, a tongue portion  52   a  of a plug connector  52  of  FIG. 4 ). The terminals  120  extend to the slot  140 . 
     In the present embodiment, the insulation body  110  has a protection portion  112 , and the metal housing  130  has a mating end. The protection portion  112  of the insulation body  110  extends outward to the mating end  132  from internal of the metal housing  130  to cover at least a part of the mating end  132 . 
     Referring to  FIG. 1  and  FIG. 4 , during a process that a user couples the plug connector  100  to the receptacle connector  52  disposed in the electronic apparatus  50  to form an electronic assembly, the protection portion  112  of the insulation body  110  extends to cover the mating end  132 , and particularly cover a corner portion or a sharp portion of the mating end  132 . To be specific, the metal housing  130  presents a hollow flat shape, and has a pair of side edges opposite to each other, where one end of each of the side edges of the metal housing  130  constructs a corner of the mating end  130 . 
     In the present embodiment, the protection portion  112  is structurally formed by a part of the insulation body  110 . In another embodiment, the protection portion  112  can be structurally independent to the insulation body  110 . Therefore, the corner portion or the sharp portion of the mating end  132  of the metal housing  130  does not directly contact a decorative housing  51  of the electronic apparatus  50 , but the protection portion  112  of the insulation body  110  extends to the mating end  132  to contact the decorative housing  51  of the electronic apparatus  50 . Since a hardness of the protection portion  112  is smaller than a hardness of the metal housing  130 , the mating end  132  of the metal housing  130  is avoided to scratch the decorative housing  51  of the electronic apparatus  50 . 
     In the present embodiment, the mating end  132  of the metal housing  130  can be retreated by a short distance to form a little space, and the protection portion  112  of the insulation body  110  extends to the aforementioned little space such that the protection portion  112  extended to the mating end  132  is flush with the mating end  132  to comply with the corresponding specification. 
     In summary, in the application, the insulation body of the plug connector extends to cover the mating end of the metal housing, such that the mating end does not directly contact the decorative housing of the electronic apparatus, so as to avoid a situation that the mating end of the metal housing scratch the decorative housing of the electronic apparatus. 
     Although the application has been described with reference to the above embodiments, the application is not limited to the above embodiments. It is apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that modifications and variations to the described embodiments may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the application. Accordingly, the scope of the application will be defined by the attached claims.