CARD CAGE

• Main Authors: MORICZ, JULIUS J, HANSEN, ERLING, KOHT, LOWELL I, ALLEN, DENNIS, PETRO, TIMOTHY L., SR
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French
• Published: 22.05.1991
• Edition: 5
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS; CONVERSION OR DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRIC POWER; CURRENT COLLECTORS; ELECTRICITY; GENERATION; INSTALLATION OF ELECTRIC CABLES OR LINES, OR OF COMBINEDOPTICAL AND ELECTRIC CABLES OR LINES; LINE CONNECTORS; OPTICAL ELEMENTS, SYSTEMS, OR APPARATUS; OPTICS; PHYSICS

A card cage for housing a plurality of circuit boards and passive optical fiber couplers contains a tray for storing express optical fibers of express optical fiber tubes not to be coupled within the card cage but rather expressly routed through a distribution point accommodating the card cage. The tray has a flexible hinge thereon and means for keeping the tray passively deflected away from the optical couplers for facilitating insertion and removal of optical fibers into and from the couplers. A card cage housing snap fits to a card cage base without requiring screws or other physically detachable elements. The housing also includes a plurality of flexible deflectable clips integrally molded as part of the card cage housing which normally keep the circuit cards or boards within the card cage housing but which are deflectable so as to allow the boards to be slideably inserted and removed from channels within the housing for guiding the boards. The card cage further includes a backplane from which a plurality of test pins extend externally from the card cage so as to allow an electrical integrity of the card cage to be easily tested.