NASA STD Wire Splicing

[larryblag 14,236]

I found the following resource and thought it might be useful:

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/107238/how-to-splice-wires-to-nasas-standards/

 

I've just had a go myself. Looks very robust and probably beats my "bring the two ends parallel and solder" approach. Worth a go, if you've room to work though?

 

Practice 1 by P. Garry Ball, on Flickr

 

1 by P. Garry Ball, on Flickr

 

2 by P. Garry Ball, on Flickr

 

3 by P. Garry Ball, on Flickr

 

 

[embee 7,288]

Houston, we have a problem

 

[larryblag 14,236]

26 minutes ago, embee said:

Houston, we have a problem

 

Oh 8o11ocks!

[fred_jb 10,265]

We did this sort of thing when I trained as technician apprentice at Marconi in Chelmsford.  As A level entry students we got to avoid most of the metalwork and machine shop training (the dreaded pit) and went straight on to electronics. As well as soldering techniques, we also used to make up cableforms using jigs and special knots in the plastic covered string used to tie all the cables together. I remember one incident where having very quickly finished the first one of two cableforms in an exercise, I went on and also completed the second without being told to.  When I proudly presented this to the instructor he said "There is only one thing wrong with that" and promptly took out his wirecutters and snipped it in half - serve me right for being a smart arse I guess!

 

Getting back to the soldering, that is a good technique for single core cables, though is a little trickier with the more usual multistrand wire.  Where possible I try not to cut cables but just (very carefully) remove a section of insulation from the main cable and then twist the joining cable around the exposed section and solder.  Also, when joining to two or more adjacent cables I stagger the positions so that there is less chance of the two joins shorting if insulation tape gets disturbed, and this also minimises the bulge in the original cable which you would get if all the joins were in the same place.

[Callisidrin 447]

16 minutes ago, fred_jb said:

Also, when joining to two or more adjacent cables I stagger the positions

Me too. Especially useful when using crimps to join cables as those buggers take up a lot of space. Soldering and sleeving always the best method though and not likely to come apart, when trying to squeeze everything back into a tiny space.

[larryblag 14,236]

The 1150RT had a connector to join the muti function display to the loom. It gave me quite a bit of trouble due to corrosion so the following spring - SNIP off it came. I hard wired it instead using the techniques described by Fred and Chris.

A bundle of twelve crimped connections were impractical so I joined and soldered them (staggered yes) and insulated each with heat shrink sleeving then wrapped the whole lot in self-amalgamating tape for water tightness. Never had a problem after that.