Automatic Contact Welding in Wire Spring Relay Manufacture

The wire spring relay, Fig. 1, was designed with such advantages over U and Y type relays as higher operating speed, longer life, lower power consumption and lower cost, as described in a recent article in this Journal.* The lower cost will be achieved largely by reduction of assembly labor time, by reduction of adjustment effort after assembly due to greater precision in the manufacture of component parts and by extensive use of automatic manufacturing processes. To attain these goals the closest cooperation has been necessary, particularly during the design stage, between Bell Telephone Laboratories relay engineers and Western Electric development engineers. Small lots of wire spring relays of several of the early designs were manufactured by the Western to furnish the Laboratories with relays for testing. These operations provided Western development engineers with valuable manufacturing experience. The present design of relay has been in production on a pilot plant basis. The contact welders have operated as individual units during * A. C. Keller, A New General Purpose Relay for Telephone Switching Systems, B.S.T.J., Nov., 1952. 897