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Old 03-03-19, 21:47
David Dunlop David Dunlop is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Posts: 3,384
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Clearly I have not had to do a lot of tinning for quite a while. I could not find my small tin of rosin flux anywhere and ended up making a quick run yesterday morning to a local electronics shop to purchase a fresh tin of flux.

With that on the workbench this afternoon, I have now completed the tinning of the eight leads to the Octal Plug. While checking the plug itself for any issues, I finally noticed that whoever the manufacturer of this particular plug was, they took the time to cast in the pin numbers on both the top and bottom of the plug base. Nice touch, as not all manufacturers seem to do that.

I did notice one other thing, which made the close inspection worthwhile. There was a noticeable variation in the size of the openings on the tips of the pins. Not a huge variation, but just enough that only 5 of the eight leads would slide easily through the openings. I took a small steel scratch all from the tool bin and gently inserted it into each hole to match them all to the largest sized opening visible. It was a bit of a challenge getting all eight leads into their allotted pins at roughly the same time. Seven of the eight seated quite easily and as each went into place, I used a pair of small needle nose pliers to gently bend the leads a few degrees to the side of the pin tips to hold each in place until they can be soldered home. The yellow lead, which had the greatest distance to travel from the end of the cable loom to its final resting place, took a little nudging to get it far enough out of its pin end to grab with the pliers, fully seat and get its holding bend applied.

Next step will be the final soldering of the eight leads to the Octal Plug pins and then I will use a small stone on my Dremel to clear away the excess leads. But not before I quadruple check continuity between the Octal Plug pins and the sockets. I’ve made enough of those hasty mistakes over time, I don’t have any desire to purchase another T-shirt!

David
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