Development of Solderless Wire Connector for Splicing Multipair Cable

The development of new connectors and new techniques for making wire connections has been actively pursued at Bell Telephone Laboratories for some time. Current estimates indicate that well over two billion wire connections are made each year in the Bell System. These connections obviously represent a large investment, and the problems of cost and reliability are becoming increasingly difficult as modern circuits grow in complexity. Performance testing of a connector to establish its reliability is a challenging task. l.i B Wire Connector The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and performance appraisal of the B Wire Connector recently released for splicing outside plant multipair cable conductors. As illustrated in Fig. 1, this connector consists of a thin springy liner with sharp tangs on the internal surface, and a brass outer shell encased in a plastic jacket. In use, the conductors to be joined are inserted without removing insulation, and the connector is pressed with a pneumatic tool. The sharp tangs penetrate the insulation and establish contact with the conductors as illustrated in Fig. 2. The individual tangs act as springs, storing en131