TC-1: Technical Commitee on Electrical Contacts, Connectors, and Cable

The scope of this Committee is to be the focal point within the IEEE CPMT Society for electrical contacts, electrical connectors, and interconnecting cable. Its membership consists of individuals having an interest in the research, development, manufacture, and utilization of electrical contacts and devices which contain them. The Committee holds regularly scheduled meetings and functions through the Holm Organization and through task forces having specific objectives. The Committee sponsors or supports conferences, publications, educational, standardization, and other activities.

The 2000 IEEE Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts was held in Chicago in September. This was the 46th Annual conference in the United States where professionals presented and discussed the latest developments in the field of electric contacts. This year, we had 120 attendees including 30 from overseas. The technical program was very successful with 32 papers and 2 tutorials. Papers were presented on electric contacts in switches, relays and connectors, new contact materials and coatings, arc fundamentals, thermal models, finite element analysis and corrosion. A special 42 Volt tutorial session was presented by Robert Beer, George Drew and Thomas Schoepf of Delphi Packard Electric Systems, and Paul Slade of Cutler-Hammer. This was a very informative tutorial since 42 volt in automotive power systems is going to revolutionize the electrical components supply chain. Issues on 42 volt applications, arc erosion, electrical safety, electrochemical corrosion, EMI and RFI issues were discussed by the Packard presenters. Dr. Paul Slade, a long time contributor to the Holm Conference and a veteran lecturer of the intensive course on electrical contacts, gave an overview of the switching arc issues and how a wave of research activities will be discussed in future conferences when engineers start to implement 42V systems. The 2001 IEEE Holm Conference will be held in Montreal (Sept 10-12), and a call for paper is published.

The conference evening social was a visit to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. at the Navy Pier where we were thoroughly quizzed on the Forest Gump Movie. TC-1 held its annual membership meeting during the conference with a new Task Group formed to define the future scope of TC1.

The committee also sponsors a 3 to 4 day intensive course on electrical contacts annually and draws about 40 attendees. The course has been very successful in teaching engineers the physics and practice of contact designs and selections. The course is a favorite for switch, relay, circuit breaker, contactor, and connector engineers from automotive, power distribution and telecommunication fields. The 2001 course will be in Pittsburgh June 10-14.

For more information on many special events organized by this committee such as intensive course, international conference, CD-ROM library and link to other societies, please visit our web site at www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/cpmt/tc1

Holm Pictures.

1. Paul Slade and Ralph Armington at the Holm awards Luncheon

2. Gerry Witter and other volunteers at the conference.