US Patent 10312635 Contact bridge punched out away from shielding plate

An electrical connector includes a terminal module enclosed within a metallic shell. The terminal module including two contact module commonly sandwich a shielding plate therebetween. In each contact module, before forming the complete terminal module, the bridges between the contacting sections of the neighboring contacts are removed by punching in a direction from the inner hidden surface to the outer exposed surface of the contacting section of the contact. Such an outward punching results in the barbs extending away from the shielding plate after the whole terminal module is formed so as to avoid the defect due to the unexpected relatively tiny distance between the contacting sections of the contacts and the shielding plate in the mating tongue along the vertical direction.