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Wire Wrapping Technique HOWTO

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Paganini

Post subject: Wire Wrapping Technique HOWTO

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2022 4:24 pm

Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:33 pm
Posts: 491

I also have this question:

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/318562/wire-wrapping-power-ground

The Stack Exchange answers don't seem very informative. It seems like there must have been a lot of wire-wrap lore that is now lost, or at least hidden. Googling for wire wrap howtos come up with a few hackaday videos and Garth's primer, but nothing really detailed. (Not to knock the primer - I'm getting pretty decent at at making individual connections thanks to studying Garth's example; far fewer crossovers than at first!) But, how *did* Bill Herd connect to those bare ground rails? And check out those bypass capacitors; they're *insulated.* Did he hand-insulate the leads?! Also, they appear to have gone on last, since they're on top. Why is that?

When I was (re)learning how to solder, a lot of people recommended an old US Navy engineering manual as still being a best practice guide. Is there something like that for wire-wrap? Did each engineer have to re-solve the same problems and develop a kind of personal "artistic" style?

I ask partly because I want to improve my skill; but also because this is kind of an example of a general abstraction that interests me: how much did experts in (some field) have to invent themselves, and how much was learned from prior sources? (I asked a similar question on the Retrocomputing Forum about where Gary Kildall got the know-how to write CP/M.)

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GARTHWILSON

Post subject: Re: Wire Wrapping Technique HOWTO

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2022 5:37 pm

Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2002 1:09 am
Posts: 8546
Location: Southern California

You can use a combination of WW and soldering. (WW wire solders great too.) Just make sure you don't get solder or flux on the part of the WW pins that you'll need to wrap on later. When I need to solder to a WW pin, I solder at the very base, leaving most of the pin untouched by solder and flux. On rare occasion, I have soldered something at the tip of the pin when there's no more room to wrap anyway and I know I won't need to get the WW tool on that pin again. In the picture in the middle of the page at http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/construction.html, you can see WW wires soldered to the board-edge connector at the bottom (these, BTW, do not go to the processor's buses, only I/O) and other WW wires soldered to the printer connector at the middle of the right edge. Now that I have WW pin headers, I might have done it differently, but I made that computer in its original form in a week, and didn't want to take the time to search for such parts and wait for their arrival.

Quote:

And check out those bypass capacitors; they're *insulated.* Did he hand-insulate the leads?! Also, they appear to have gone on last, since they're on top. Why is that?

It's hardly necessary to insulate those; but the way to do it is just strip insulation off of wire and slip it over the capacitor leads. You can thread later wires underneath them if you find you need to add wires after they're put on.

As for the power and ground grids, this quote in the replies at your link is good:

Quote:

The easiest, and usually completely adequate way, is to grid the power and ground. Run a set of wires north-south connecting to every ground in columns. Then run a set of wires east-west, connecting to the same grounds in rows. This will ensure that return current due to any signal will be able to find a reasonably close return path. Do the same for power.

People always think they have to make the power and ground wires fatter. Note however that resistance is not the enemy, but rather, inductance is, and enlarging the wire has almost no effect on inductance. What reduces the inductive effect is to get the finest practical grid of power and ground connections.

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