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Old 30th Jan 2010, 2:19 pm   #1
fidobsa
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Default Precision Wiring

Back in the '40s & '50s my father was an electronics enthusiast and built various items including radios, a tape recorder, a television and a radiogram. I think others who heard about these projects sometimes thought they would have a go themselves. My father would then be called to fix such newly completed sets when they didn't work! He once mentioned that some of these amateur builders went to great lengths to ensure that all wires were straight and all bends were perfect right angles. They thought the circuit would not work properly if the wires between components were a bit too long, curved etc. I wondered if forum members have seen old valve chassis wired up with this precision wiring?
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 2:54 pm   #2
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

I had to do this when I went through the RN Electrical School - HMS Collingwood. Part of the course was to build an oscilloscope timebase and an AM Transmitter, both had to be wired as neatly as possible, all valve and built on aluminium chassis. Radio and TV sets were made to a price so I suppose neatness was not given such high consideration. The vast range of equipment I came across in the service was always neatly wired and some of the commercial test equipment too.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 3:10 pm   #3
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

One only has to look at the wiring in early Leak, Quad and Radford equipment to see that these and other manufacturers went to the trouble of making their products as neat as possible.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 4:25 pm   #4
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

It is interesting to note that many of the early EMI sets had laced wiring looms as well as untidy point-to-point wiring - I suppose that a pre-formed loom helped prevent wiring errors so saved money in the long run. Although the wiring on these early sets could be a bit untidy, they were marvellous compared to the early 1950s Philips sets, especially their TVs.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 5:46 pm   #5
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Personally, I really appreciate neat wiring and logical layout. I remember the first time I looked inside a Sony stereo cassette - shock about covers it, and this was using a PCB. How could such an untidy mess work so well? I've never bought Sony since... sorry in advance to any Sony lovers...
Of course, neatness doesn't guarantee practicality, but it sure looks good. It may also be the case that many amateurs built their 1930s and 1940s sets by carefully following Mr. Camm's wiring diagrams, rather than the schematics. If so, it isn't hard to see how errors could have crept in.
-Tony
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 6:20 pm   #6
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

I read somewhere that ex-Services people brought up on neat wiring can sometimes come a cropper the first time they try to build RF stuff, as the neat wiring can have excessive strays. Neat is OK for DC and audio (although even there you have to careful about grounding) but messy can be better for RF!
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 6:33 pm   #7
Alan Stepney
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

I'm not sure I would agree with that.
One can build for RF, even VHF, and still have a neat layout.

It may not, probably would not, have all rigid wire and right-angle corners, but should be logical and not look like a birds nest.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 6:57 pm   #8
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

I agree with Alan. Neatness still counts, and particularly in the RF world. Perhaps not according to the rules above, there is still a level of quality control.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 7:56 pm   #9
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Hi
I built a little superhet radio earlier this month, and it was a right old mess under the chassis, but it worked supprisingly well, I decided to tidy up the mass of dangling components and wires onto some small bits of pcb, and when I'd finished the damn thing didn't work anymore!! I still haven't got round to sorting it out..

regards,
lloyd.
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 8:02 pm   #10
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

I generally go for neat, regimented component layouts and wiring, but I am acutely aware of layout issues, strays, ground loops having spent a lot of time with switch-mode power supplies. Reconciling the two is not at all easy.

There's nothing worse than demonstrating a piece of equipment to someone, nonchalantly saying, "Of course, I designed it and built it myself," and for them to say, "Yes it looks like it!"
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 8:02 pm   #11
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

In my apprenticeship at Thorn EMI I was taught to do neat wiring looms, all laced up with the proper cord. However, that was something of an anachronism in 1990!

In a modern parallel to the neat/scruffy RF wiring issue, a fair amount of today's PCBs are deliberately auto-routed with the tracks randomly crisscrossing each other. It helps to ensure that the various high-speed signals on a data bus, for example, don't all radiate in the same direction. Though the total emissions are the same, they're spread out nicely and thus don't create a problem when it comes to EMC testing. If they were all neat and tidy and parallel, the performance would be much worse.

Chriis
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Old 30th Jan 2010, 11:05 pm   #12
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Any ex GPO apprentices ( actually we were "Trainee Technician Apprentices") will remember learning how to wire relay sets, with precision right angled bends / terminate cables on junction boxes /join u/g cables neatly or run internal cable in straight, neat lines .
And on an installation, getting a visit from the TECH 1 to get the wiring ripped out if it wasn't to his satisfaction .
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 12:02 am   #13
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lloyd 1985 View Post
Hi
I built a little superhet radio earlier this month, and it was a right old mess under the chassis, but it worked supprisingly well, I decided to tidy up the mass of dangling components and wires onto some small bits of pcb, and when I'd finished the damn thing didn't work anymore!! I still haven't got round to sorting it out..

regards,
lloyd.

Yes I have done that a few times. With production manufacture neat wiring that works is a big plus to repeatable Quality with the end product.

Mike
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 12:14 am   #14
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Not quite in electronics but when i was serving my appretiship an an industrial electrition i worked on re wireing controle pannels for large machenes mostely in the printing industery it was the norm to make the looms up with nice 90 degre bends and once finished all laced properly.

Jay
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 12:45 am   #15
Herald1360
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

How about this?

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...32&postcount=7

Or for thereally fanatic, this (PSU in 4th picture): https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...29&postcount=1
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 2:49 am   #16
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Neatness does make fault finding easier and of course it LOOKS nice! But of course if you build it all neat and tidy and it doesn't work, not only is it heart breaking, it's annoying having to cut off the string and start checking!
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 11:16 am   #17
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Quote:
Originally Posted by DAVEHALL View Post
Any ex GPO apprentices ( actually we were "Trainee Technician Apprentices") will remember learning how to wire relay sets ,with precision right angled bends / terminate cables on junction boxes /join u/g cables neatly or run internal cable in straight ,neat lines .
And on an installation getting a visit from the TECH 1 ,to get the wiring ripped out ,if it wasn't to his satisfaction .
Oh how I remember failing my plate wiring course as they decided that my wiring wasn't good enough, it soured me so much that I vowed never to go on 'construction' groups but whereever possible stay on 'maintenance' instead.
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 11:39 am   #18
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Post Re: Precision Wiring

I served my apprenticeship in wiring and assembly and instrument making at the Marconi Company. Some of the cableforms where very complexe and marker sleeves where put on every wire and cable, and various crimped plugs and sockets had to be fitted.Trying to get a Cannon plug to go together after fitting all the wires was not the easiest task. Of course very high freqency wiring had to be point to point by the shortest route.

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Old 31st Jan 2010, 12:47 pm   #19
brianc
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Sometimes, beauty is only skin deep. The majority of my working life was spent as an engineer in the broadcast television installation industry. The installations consisted mainly of rack-mounted kit in 45U (1U = 1.75") high equipment cabinets, rows and rows of them. Behind the rear doors, the cables were always formed into looms and tightly laced or, later, tywrapped. Cables in the looms were all parallel and seemed, magically, to come out of the loom in the correct place and on the correct side of the loom - wonderful!
However, lifting a few floor tiles explains how it is done. The chaos under the floor enables the beauty above. The moral is don't lift the floor unless absolutely necessary!
What Tin said about neatness helping fault finding is true if the circuit info is available. If not, lacing etc. makes tracing the circuit a nightmare.
Cheers
Brian
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Old 31st Jan 2010, 3:21 pm   #20
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Default Re: Precision Wiring

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianc View Post
What Tin said about neatness helping fault finding is true if the circuit info is available. If not, lacing etc. makes tracing the circuit a nightmare.
Cheers
Brian
Reminds me of my fist job. Some of the boards were built on large sheets of patch board containing may TTL IC's. Interconnects were made with red Kynar wire loomed together and laced with black waxed lacing cord.

The boards looked fabulous, each termination from the loom bent at a precise right angle at TTL pin. The problem with this regime was fault finding. Although the PCBs looked brilliant, they never worked straight from production. We of course had circuit diagrams, but if the wire didn't go to where it was supposed to, it was a nightmare to find out where it was actually going to and an even worse nightmare to correct multiple wiring problems without ruining the look of everything !

A colleague of mine resorted to cutting all the looming and wiring point-to-point to get the PCB working. The whole thing ended up looking like red spaghetti with TTL buried underneath it. He then dumped it back to production to re-loom. We nearly had a walkout on our hands

I have to admit to my own wiring being "functional" rather than "precision". My efforts always end up looking a tad "organic". We used to have a saying where I used to work that the mental stability of the engineer was inversely proportional to the neatness of the wiring. This is because we had some rather odd fellows who used to produce "mechanical" looking prototype circuits.

The other saying was "it either works, or it fits in the box". I've found this to be particularly true in the past when trying to neaten Microprocessor based circuits working at lots of MHz. The point has now been reached where wired prototyping is now impractical for a large array of applications because of speed / crosstalk issues and also because of the use of fine-line IC's and also BGAs.
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