Case Study: Enhancing a Contact Spring for Driving Assistance System with Precision Engineering

By Danel Montero, Product Manager at RPK Group, and Iker Ibisate, Product Engineer at RPK Technological Center

Our RPK Group engineering teams support you in creating, designing, and developing unique components from scratch or improving the performance of existing parts. This time, we were set the challenge of optimizing an existing contact spring soldered on a PCB.

The Challenge

Our customer commissioned RPK Group to optimize a contact spring for a driving assistance application (ADAS - Advanced Driver Assistance System). The aim was that the spring had to guarantee permanent contact between an aluminum plate (radar transmitter and receptor) and a PCB. Therefore, RPK Group and our product engineers committed to sizing a both elastic and conductive part, defining the base and size of the material, its plating, and the geometry of the part. Moreover, our development engineers had to develop the technology required for production. 

FEM/FEA Analysis

Making use of the ANSYS license, our engineers ran simulations to achieve an optimized solution. Firstly, we defined the main and plating materias. As a final step, we made adjustments to the geometry to  ensure all requirements were met.

Requirements

Proposed part

Technology

The next step was to develop high-precision micro NC multi-slide tooling and technology. Such small radii and punches required the knowledge of our cutting-edge engineers at the RPK Technological Center.

Final focus on the customer

The final step was to integrate it into the assembly line on the customer's side. The packaging chosen had to  work well with it. Consequently, we examined it and ultimately decided to utilize a Tape & Reel solution within the clean room. This guarantees that parts arrive with the required cleanliness and enables our client to feed the springs in automatic mode.