About the time my old 'puter crashed and burned, I asked about tracing
wire from an operator panel to find each wire's function. I lost the
replies to this post, sorry. The job has changed slightly as we're
trashing the old panel and building a new one.

Anyway, I now have a comparitively easy job of wringing out two fifty
conductor cables. I could just pull in multi color cable and be done
with it, but I'm a cheap a$$.

Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?

Karl

On Oct 28, 2:43*pm, Karl Townsend
wrote:
...
Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?
Karl

There were several ways. Mine:

Determine the outer covering and wire strip lengths for your
connectors.

When you strip the wires only pull the insulation a short ways,
leaving it on the wire so it doesn't fray but you have access to buzz
them out.

Label one end 1 - 50. Also put on the J or P numbers while it's easy.
I used Rhino printable heatshrink sleeving when the company demanded
and paid for it.

Connect your buzzer to 1 and find the match on the other end. Label it
and fold it back.

Repeat for 2 - 50.

jsw

On 2010-10-28, Karl Townsend wrote:
About the time my old 'puter crashed and burned, I asked about tracing
wire from an operator panel to find each wire's function. I lost the
replies to this post, sorry. The job has changed slightly as we're
trashing the old panel and building a new one.

Anyway, I now have a comparitively easy job of wringing out two fifty
conductor cables. I could just pull in multi color cable and be done
with it, but I'm a cheap a$$.

Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?

Do you mean "ring" out? (The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

You could use a phone technician's "fox and hound" (one puts an
electrical noise on the wire, and the other listens for it -- usually
just by putting the probe near the wires outside the insulation.

Of course -- a *new* fox and hound would probably cost you as
much as your color-coded fifty conductor cables, depending on length.
(25-pair phone cable would work and be cheap -- except that it is solid
wire, and not good for use where there is vibration.)

Do you have a digital multimeter? If so, does it have an audible
beeper for continuity checks? Then -- just run a long wire from one
side to the other end and have someone else handy to move that end while
you are at your end. That should use low enough voltages and currents
so it won't harm anything.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2010-10-28, Karl Townsend wrote:
About the time my old 'puter crashed and burned, I asked about tracing
wire from an operator panel to find each wire's function. I lost the
replies to this post, sorry. The job has changed slightly as we're
trashing the old panel and building a new one.

Anyway, I now have a comparitively easy job of wringing out two fifty
conductor cables. I could just pull in multi color cable and be done
with it, but I'm a cheap a$$.

Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?

Do you mean "ring" out? (The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

You could use a phone technician's "fox and hound" (one puts an
electrical noise on the wire, and the other listens for it -- usually
just by putting the probe near the wires outside the insulation.


http://www.harborfreight.com/cable-tracker-94181.html



Only: $22.99 - on Sale: $17.99


Cable Tracker

Description of Cen-Tech 94181

* Identify and trace electrical wires or cables without damaging
insulation
* Checks for short circuits and open circuits
* Designed for use with telephone lines, alarm cables, computer
cables, intercom lines, speaker wires, and thermostat wiring
* Includes transmitter, receiver, #RJ11 telephone jack plug, two 9
volt batteries, users manual and carrying case

Ground wire length: 24-9/16", Tool dimensions: 15-5/16" L x 1-5/8" W x
15/16" T



Of course -- a *new* fox and hound would probably cost you as
much as your color-coded fifty conductor cables, depending on length.
(25-pair phone cable would work and be cheap -- except that it is solid
wire, and not good for use where there is vibration.)


The cords on the 1A2 phones were stranded, but only about six feet
long. I still have some, somewhere. I parted out over 100 of thise
phones a few years back and kept some of the bteer cables. Some have a
50 pin blue ribbon connector on one end & lugs on the other. The rest
have set of mating male & a female 50 pin blue ribbon connectors.


--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.

On Oct 29, 2:04*am, "DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[snippage]

* * * * Do you mean "ring" out? *(The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

[more snippage]

Thanks for that - it was like fingernails on a blackboard when I read
it. When people ask me what I do for a living (I sometimes wonder
myself), I often tell them I'm a master wire untangler.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:28:38 -0700, rangerssuck wrote:
On Oct 29, 2:04*am, "DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[snippage]

* * * * Do you mean "ring" out? *(The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

[more snippage]

Thanks for that - it was like fingernails on a blackboard when I read
it. When people ask me what I do for a living (I sometimes wonder
myself), I often tell them I'm a master wire untangler.

Actually, each works in its own way. I had to "wring" out a cable in an
F-4 Phantom jet. I was sitting in the cockpit, and there was a guy under
the plane at the other end of the cable, and a third guy off to the side
who would shout out which wire to check.

Kinda like wringing out a problem? :-)

I've also heard "buzz it out."

Cheers!
Rich

On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:54:15 -0700, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:28:38 -0700, rangerssuck wrote:
On Oct 29, 2:04*am, "DoN. Nichols" wrote:

[snippage]

* * * * Do you mean "ring" out? *(The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

[more snippage]

Thanks for that - it was like fingernails on a blackboard when I read
it. When people ask me what I do for a living (I sometimes wonder
myself), I often tell them I'm a master wire untangler.

Actually, each works in its own way. I had to "wring" out a cable in an
F-4 Phantom jet. I was sitting in the cockpit, and there was a guy under
the plane at the other end of the cable, and a third guy off to the side
who would shout out which wire to check.

Kinda like wringing out a problem? :-)

I've also heard "buzz it out."

Cheers!
Rich

AL WRITE GIES, I KANT SPEL !

Karl

On 29 Oct 2010 06:04:54 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

SNIP


Do you mean "ring" out? (The old way, before voltage sensitive
semiconductor devices, involved a battery, a long wire, and an electric
doorbell or buzzer -- thus the "ring". "Wring out" sounds like you
are trying to get rid of water from it.

SNIP

Wring and ring sort of go hand in hand with this:

Ode to My Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect awl the way.
My checker told me sew.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:43:13 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

About the time my old 'puter crashed and burned, I asked about tracing
wire from an operator panel to find each wire's function. I lost the
replies to this post, sorry. The job has changed slightly as we're
trashing the old panel and building a new one.

Anyway, I now have a comparitively easy job of wringing out two fifty
conductor cables. I could just pull in multi color cable and be done
with it, but I'm a cheap a$$.

Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?

Karl



Hey Karl,

I've handled a lot of multi-wire cables up to 60 wires (there might be
as many as five that size on an elevator), and have never seen one
that didn't have one of either number or colour coding of some kind on
the insulation/jacket of each individual wire. Some wires used a
colour and a "mark", say wires of orange or yellow or black or white
or blue,or,or,or,or,or,or, plus either a solid stripe or dash or dot
( eg..blue wire with no stripe, blue wire with solid stripe, blue wire
with dashed "stripe", blue wire with "dots" stripe ), giving an ID for
the 4 blue wires for example.

Have you looked closely at the cable for one of those methods? Solid
colour coding is very obvious, mixed imprint colour coding is tougher
(which of the two colours is the colour and which is the marker
colour??) and on smaller wires, below 18 gauge, the number writing
gets REALLY small.

One thing about the cables using printed numbers on the jacket, it
usually made it easier for colour-blind guys. Usually! It's a real
crap-your-drawers moment when you hook a few hundred connections up on
the car top, and when you get to the machine room and ask how your
helper is doing he answers
" OK. No problem. Ummmm.. How do you know if this one is a black
wire with with a white tracer, or a white with a black tracer?"

Jeeezzzzuuusss.

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario.

On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:06:42 -0400, Brian Lawson
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:43:13 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

About the time my old 'puter crashed and burned, I asked about tracing
wire from an operator panel to find each wire's function. I lost the
replies to this post, sorry. The job has changed slightly as we're
trashing the old panel and building a new one.

Anyway, I now have a comparitively easy job of wringing out two fifty
conductor cables. I could just pull in multi color cable and be done
with it, but I'm a cheap a$$.

Anyway, I remember somebody had a quick and nifty way to wring out
wires when you have both ends of a cable without markings. How, again?

Karl



Hey Karl,

I've handled a lot of multi-wire cables up to 60 wires (there might be
as many as five that size on an elevator), and have never seen one
that didn't have one of either number or colour coding of some kind on
the insulation/jacket of each individual wire. Some wires used a
colour and a "mark", say wires of orange or yellow or black or white
or blue,or,or,or,or,or,or, plus either a solid stripe or dash or dot
( eg..blue wire with no stripe, blue wire with solid stripe, blue wire
with dashed "stripe", blue wire with "dots" stripe ), giving an ID for
the 4 blue wires for example.

Have you looked closely at the cable for one of those methods? Solid
colour coding is very obvious, mixed imprint colour coding is tougher
(which of the two colours is the colour and which is the marker
colour??) and on smaller wires, below 18 gauge, the number writing
gets REALLY small.

One thing about the cables using printed numbers on the jacket, it
usually made it easier for colour-blind guys. Usually! It's a real
crap-your-drawers moment when you hook a few hundred connections up on
the car top, and when you get to the machine room and ask how your
helper is doing he answers
" OK. No problem. Ummmm.. How do you know if this one is a black
wire with with a white tracer, or a white with a black tracer?"

Jeeezzzzuuusss.

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario.

Or the story an instrument man told me: he was trying to troubleshoot
a large panel with loads of connections in spring terminals. Looking
at wire markers, everything looked in order. As soon as he removed a
wire, though, he found that none of them had been stripped.

I'd have made sure that guy was gone for good.

Pete Keillor

On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:31:29 -0500, Pete Keillor
wrote:

BIG SNIP


Or the story an instrument man told me: he was trying to troubleshoot
a large panel with loads of connections in spring terminals. Looking
at wire markers, everything looked in order. As soon as he removed a
wire, though, he found that none of them had been stripped.

I'd have made sure that guy was gone for good.

Pete Keillor


Hey Peter,

As I said.......

Jeeezzzzuuusss.!!!!!!!

We had a lot of units that used maybe 100 to 150 AC relays on the
panel and wires all with AMP manufactured solderless connectors
crimped on from the factory, mostly fork type. Most are sorta "pilot
duty" and don't carry much current. After 10 or 15 years, the wires
break JUUUUSSSSTTT inside the crimp end of the AMPs, but the stranded
wires have become brittle and stay right in place, so we get
intermittent faults. Bitch to find!!

Never had the same trouble with T&B connectors.

Brian.

On 2010-10-29, Brian Lawson wrote:

[ ... ]

We had a lot of units that used maybe 100 to 150 AC relays on the
panel and wires all with AMP manufactured solderless connectors
crimped on from the factory, mostly fork type. Most are sorta "pilot
duty" and don't carry much current. After 10 or 15 years, the wires
break JUUUUSSSSTTT inside the crimp end of the AMPs, but the stranded
wires have become brittle and stay right in place, so we get
intermittent faults. Bitch to find!!

Were these the ones without insulation -- just two sets of flags
around the insulation and gripping the stripped wire (Type F) -- or the
pre-insulated ones (P.I.D.G. -- "Pre Insulated Diamond Grip") which are
a more stable insulation support. Normally, I've found the latter type
to be very reliable over the years -- at least if crimped by AMP tools
as designed.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Brian Lawson wrote:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:31:29 -0500, Pete Keillor
wrote:

BIG SNIP


Or the story an instrument man told me: he was trying to troubleshoot
a large panel with loads of connections in spring terminals. Looking
at wire markers, everything looked in order. As soon as he removed a
wire, though, he found that none of them had been stripped.

I'd have made sure that guy was gone for good.

Pete Keillor


Hey Peter,

As I said.......

Jeeezzzzuuusss.!!!!!!!

We had a lot of units that used maybe 100 to 150 AC relays on the
panel and wires all with AMP manufactured solderless connectors
crimped on from the factory, mostly fork type. Most are sorta "pilot
duty" and don't carry much current. After 10 or 15 years, the wires
break JUUUUSSSSTTT inside the crimp end of the AMPs, but the stranded
wires have become brittle and stay right in place, so we get
intermittent faults. Bitch to find!!

Never had the same trouble with T&B connectors.

Brian.


Good crimping tools should be periodically calibrated with a go nogo
gauge. Long time ago I was working on a Convair 990 which had
intermittent pa system audio. Traced the problem to a splice box under
the galley. Every crimp was under crimped. I could pull out just about
every wire. The coffee leaking from the galley and getting into the
splice box didn't help either. Leaning back on the hydraulic tank that
was just filled where I was working was an adventure. Skydrol is not
the stuff to get on your skin. The guy that filled it sure was sloppy.
Lucky there was a hose nearby to wash down my back.


John

On 29 Oct 2010 22:44:59 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

SNIP
Were these the ones without insulation -- just two sets of flags
around the insulation and gripping the stripped wire (Type F) -- or the
pre-insulated ones (P.I.D.G. -- "Pre Insulated Diamond Grip") which are
a more stable insulation support. Normally, I've found the latter type
to be very reliable over the years -- at least if crimped by AMP tools
as designed.

Enjoy,
DoN.

Hey DoN,

No insulation on the terminals, and no "flags" to support the wire.
Plain old crimp style and using #18 (mostly) stranded wire. I have no
idea how the factory crimped them.

Quick Google didn't get the AMP ones, but here's the "good" T&B
Stakons

http://www.tnb.com/ps/endeca/index.cgi?a=nav&N=592+1010+3414+4294955692&Ntt=

The bare, uninsulated crimp terminals are generally suitable where the wires
are securely supported close to the terminal end.
I don't suggest those double-sided tape sticky pads intended to anchor
cables, for an application where there is heat or oils present, but
generally OK for normal temperatures in very clean equipment.

A secure anchor point near a terminal strip can be implemented by the
addition of a single tapped hole near the terminal strip, for mounting
various types of hardware (rubber covered cable clamp, for example).

Sometimes I've improvised an anchor point by placing a ring terminal under a
terminal strip mounting screw, then running a tiny wire/zip tie thru the
section where the wire would normally go, and then securing the wire(s) with
the tie.

Those AMP uninsulated terminals that eventually fail may have been crimped
too tightly. An airtight connection is ideal, but any tighter, and the dies
are almost pinching the wire off like a cheap wire cutter does (excessive
deformation of the conductor).

Some insulation grip should be included with uninsulated-type crimp
terminals, even if it's just a quality shrink tubing of the proper size
(double layered would be better), but then that's a lot of manual labor/time
added to each connection.

In a proper installation, wires should have some sort of secure support near
the terminals, although lots of installations simply secure the wires
nearby, into a bundle with wire/zip ties without any anchor.

As mentioned, the PIDG AMP crimps have additional material in the terminals,
to securely support the insulation of the conductor, and in critical
applications, additional support is provided in close proximity to the
terminals for strain relief and protection from vibration.

FWIW, some of the high reliability/aerospace crimps are referred to as W
crimps, as the terminal is deformed from both sides by the dies, so that the
cross-section of the actual electrical connection forms a W shape.

--
WB
..........


"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...

some good stuff snipped

I would *never* use the bare terminals of the style shown in
your URL in the presence of vibration -- especially for stranded wire.

Enjoy,
DoN.

Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. |
http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---