Wiring Harness? That’s A Wrap!

January 12, 2024 by Al Williams 22 Comments

[Mr Innovative] likes to keep his wire harnesses tidy, but it is a pain to neatly wrap cables. So, he automated the process using a combination of milled acrylic and 3D printing. We hope the design files will be up on his website soon, although the mechanism is similar to another wrapping machine he made a few years ago. However, it can still be a source of inspiration if you want to do a unique take on it.

To use the machine, you feed the wires through the center hole and mount tape on the spool. A motor spins the spool and you only need to slowly advance the tool to get a nice close wrap. Naturally, you can wrap tape around wires by hand, so this is a bit of a luxury item. However, we could see modifying it to move the cable through at a constant rate with another motor, which might do a better job than you can do by hand.

We couldn’t help but wonder if you could start with a ping pong paddle instead of cutting the frame out of acrylic.

Continue reading “Wiring Harness? That’s A Wrap!” →

Wire Wrapping Skills Put To Use For Sign Making

March 4, 2020 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

We don’t see many wire wrapped circuits these days, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was nearly a lost art at this point. But that doesn’t mean the technique can’t be applied elsewhere. [MiHu-Works] recently wrote in to share a sign they recently made for a client’s restaurant that looks an awful lot like the back panel of a homebrew computer to us.

Before you get a chance to scroll down and complain about it in the comments, we admit this one is fairly deep into the crafts side of the spectrum. But it’s also a gorgeous piece that we’d be happy to hang up in the hackerspace, so we don’t care. There might not be any angry pixies zipping around through all that lovingly wrapped copper wire, but it certainly feels like you’re looking at the internals of some complex machine.

To make it, [MiHu-Works] first printed out the lettering on paper and put it on the wood to serve as a guide. Roofing nails were then driven into the wood to create the outline of the text. A simple tool made from a forked piece of wood was placed under the head of each nail as it was hammered in to make sure the depth was consistent. It also made sure there was adequate room underneath to wrap the copper wires through them. Then it was time for the wrapping…so much wrapping. (Who is going to come through with the robot to do this?)

A few years back we asked the Hackaday readers if they thought the days of wire wrapped circuits were over. It generated a lot of discussion and interesting ideas, but looking at projects like this, perhaps we were asking the wrong question.

Continue reading “Wire Wrapping Skills Put To Use For Sign Making” →

Wire Wrap 101

December 18, 2014 by Bil Herd 72 Comments

You might notice that many of my writings start with “Back in the day”. Not wanting to disappoint I will say that back in the day we used to use wire wrap technology when we needed a somewhat solid, somewhat reliably assembly. Given a readable schematic a good tech could return a working or near-working unit in a day or two depending on the completeness and accuracy of the schematic.

Properly done a wire wrap assembly is capable of fairly high speed and acceptable noise when the alternative option of creating a custom PCB would take too long or not allow enough experimentation. Wire wrap is also used in several types of production, from telco to NASA, but I am all about the engineer’s point of view on this.

My first wire wrap tool and wire wrap wire came from Radio Shack in the mid 1970’s. I still have the wire, because frankly its kind of cheap wire and I use it when it’s the only thing I can reach quickly when I need to make a jumper on a PCB. The tool is still around also, given the fact that I can’t find it at the moment the one shown here is my new wire wrap tool which is good for low quantity wrapping, unwrapping and stripping.

The skinny little wrap tool is okay for hobbyist as the wraps are fine with a little practice. But I do recommend investing in high-quality wire. A common wire available is Kynar® coated, a fluorinated vinyl that performs well as an insulator.

Before I go too much further, here’s the video walkthrough of wire wrap, its uses, and several demonstration. But make sure you also join me after the break where I cover the rest of the information you need to start on the road to wire wrap master.

Continue reading “Wire Wrap 101” →

16-bit HCMOS Computer Is A Wire Wrapping Wonderland

July 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

The D16/M is a 16-bit computer built using HCMOS logic chips. It’s a thing of beauty from every angle thanks to the work [John Doran] put into the hobby project. But he didn’t just take pictures of the build and slap them on a webpage. He took the time to publish a remarkable volume of documents for the computer too!

The processor can execute a total of 73 instructions and offers a 100-pin bus for accessing main memory and peripherals. So far he has documented three different peripheral boards, each of which is pluggable thanks to an edge connector that accepts the board. The expansion boards are for system memory, serial communication port, and a clever four-position SD card interface for persistent storage.

Got a question about the system? He wrote a FAQ. Want to learn from his obvious mastery of wire-wrapping? He wrote a wire wrapping tips guide. Like we said, there’s a mountain of documentation and the links to it all are included in his main project page.

[Thanks Allen]