On 08/02/2005 1:52 PM, john graesser wrote:
"Ken Scharf" wrote in message
. ..

Anybody remember that cold head soldering iron advertised on tv
a while back? It was supposed to come with a pair of these
neat looking wire strippers. Well today at the Miami hamfest
someone was selling just the wire strippers. I got two of the
smaller ones good for .2-3mm wire (what's that in AWG?) and
one of the larger ones good for .2-6mm wire for $20.
These really are cool wire strippers, they quickly strip
any guage wire (in the supported range) without nicking the
wire. They even appear to work on some wire wrap wire that
is usually impossible to strip except with hard to find
'no-nick' brand cutters. (though you have to be carefull to
put the wire in the right hand side of the cutters where
the opening is a bit wider.


I don't know about the ww wire where you are, but the cheap manual wrapping
tools that Radio Shack used to sell work fine for stripping here, they had
that built in hole with a sheet metal plate with an angled slot that you
just pulled the wire into then pulled the wire down. I wrapped many a board
with just that tool, I never did like the power wrapping tools I bought. I
also didn't like the manual tools that held the spools of wire that you
didn't strip since they wrapped tight enough that the posts cut thru the
insulation.

Of course this is a hobbyist view, if I had to wrap dozens of boards a day
instead of one every couple of months I'm sure I would have a differenet
opinion of wrappers.
thanks, John.
KC5DWD


When I used to work for an engineering firm, we used to prototype in
wirewrap. Generally, we'd wrap up a handful of modules for testing.
Production would be properly soldered boards (I once assembled 200 of
'em myself when we were in a pinch.) This was almost all digital
electronics, but a fair amount of the control was discrete parts (we had
a lot of buffers and drivers, since this stuff talked to 500v grain
elevator hardware), with an EPROM running the show.

We found the only way to maintain a prototype over weeks was with tight,
self-stripping connections. Mostly because we ended up unwrapping
things a fair amount, and then re-wrapping with fresh connections. We
tried the simpler tools that you strip by hand, but they kept losing the
mechanical connection to the posts after a few weeks of digging around
and re-wrapping, which caused spurious and hard to diagnose problems.
Once we switched to the right post and wrap combo, things were much easier.

Obviously, this is about using the right tool for the application. I
haven't wrapped wire in years, so at this point I'd be likely to stick
it in my eye or something.