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My DIY projects generally look pretty amateur?and I?m talking about the work inside the case, not the case itself. I?ve seen some really good looking work on this site, but seems like everybody has their own way of doing things. Just trying to get a handle on how to keep my work neat and clean. Sometimes I see 2 or 3 wires (from pots or jacks to PCB) twisted together, sometimes I see them held together with those plastic cinch ties, sometimes I see these kinds of connections being made with lengths of insulated mic cable.

Are some methods better than others?

I think I should probably also invest in some shrink tubing. Any other advice?
 
One of my tricks:

If I've got a bunch of wires that all go the same place (often from the contacts on a rotary switch to a PCB or turret board), I'll make a bundle using a power drill.

I'll take several wires, and chuck them up in the drill. Hold the wires in one hand, the drill in the other...bingo, very nicely twisted wires. With a little practise, you'll be able to figure out how tight you can get 'em before the bundle starts to kink.

Works great for those "tightly twisted" heater wires, too.

I also have 10 different colors of 24 ga hookup wire, so I can tell which is which in pretty large bundles.

Byron Jacquot
 
Twitchmonitor, I had an old math teacher that taught me one very important lesson in life, and that was: "Neatness is condusive to accuracy."
In other words, while doing math problems, if you keep everything neat, you have a better chance of coming up with the right answer.

The same thing goes for electronics. If you keep your projects nice and tidy, they seem to work better. That's why I always take the time to do a neat job. Like this fabulous Valley People mic pre I just finished. Take a look:

http://vacuumbrain.com/The_Lab/TA/Valley_People/vp_proto.jpg
 
[quote author="CJ"]Twitchmonitor, I had an old math teacher that taught me one very important lesson in life, and that was: "Neatness is condusive to accuracy>"[/quote]

Too bad that teacher didn't teach you how to spell conducive.
:razz:

Just giving you shit, CJ... :twisted:
 
Hah! Actually, that's pretty funny-condusive to accuracy!
That's one of those self canceling phrases, or whatever they call them.

You know what's also funny is that there actually was an old math teacher, 86 years old, who did say that "accuracy..." statement. Right after he said it, he was trying to solve a trig idenity and came up with the wrong answer on the chalk board. His writing was a mess, and it jumped all over the board. I do not know if he was trying to be clever by demonstrating his own point, or if he just flubbed it.

He was a good teacher. I took the trig final with a slide rule just to jazz up the old timer. He saw me using it and came over while I was taking the final and started rapping up a story about all the slap sticks that he still had, right during the final! One slide rule that he had was made out of ivory!!!

He used to return homework papers while we were taking mid terms. At first I thought, dude!, I'm taking a test! But then I realized it was his savvy way of de-stressing everybody. And it worked.

He was the only person I ever saw with a complete set of the Steinmetz volumes, God rest his soul.

Oh, I got 100 percent on the final. Granted, some of the kids might have had their logs to 5 places, but mine were good to 4, plus or minus 0.5.

Who is Steinmetz?

http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/steinmetz.html

If your short on time, here are a couple of good ones:

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.
-- Charles Steinmetz, quoted from The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection, AApex Software (1994)

Here's an interesting anecdote, as told by Charles M. Vest, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during commencement on June 4th, 1999. "In the early years of this century, Steinmetz was brought to General Electric's facilities in Schenectady, New York. GE had encountered a performance problem with one of their huge electrical generators and had been absolutely unable to correct it. Steinmetz, a genius in his understanding of electromagnetic phenomena, was brought in as a consultant - not a very common occurrence in those days, as it would be now. Steinmetz also found the problem difficult to diagnose, but for some days he closeted himself with the generator, its engineering drawings, paper and pencil. At the end of this period, he emerged, confident that he knew how to correct the problem. After he departed, GE's engineers found a large "X" marked with chalk on the side of the generator casing. There also was a note instructing them to cut the casing open at that location and remove so many turns of wire from the stator. The generator would then function properly. And indeed it did. Steinmetz was asked what his fee would be. Having no idea in the world what was appropriate, he replied with the absolutely unheard of answer that his fee was $1000. Stunned, the GE bureaucracy then required him to submit a formally itemized invoice. They soon received it. It included two items: 1. Marking chalk "X" on side of generator: $1. 2. Knowing where to mark chalk "X": $999."
 
That Steinmetz story may well be the original version of one recast as a few minute consultation by a retired employee, with the dollar amounts adjusted for modern times (50k instead of 1k). The way it was told to me the invoice read Materials: chalk, $0.25. Labor: knowing where to put the mark, $49,999.75.
 
steinmetz_boat.jpg


Steinmetz gets the coolest-workbench award, posthumously.

:green:
 
[quote author="CJ"]Twitchmonitor, I had an old math teacher that taught me one very important lesson in life, and that was: "Neatness is condusive to accuracy."
In other words, while doing math problems, if you keep everything neat, you have a better chance of coming up with the right answer.

The same thing goes for electronics. If you keep your projects nice and tidy, they seem to work better. That's why I always take the time to do a neat job. Like this fabulous Valley People mic pre I just finished. Take a look:

http://vacuumbrain.com/The_Lab/TA/Valley_People/vp_proto.jpg[/quote]

Sweet! That's my kind of work! Yeah, I'm in Trig right now and my work is so messy that I'm constantly screwing something up. Gotta slow down, keep it nice and neat. Not there yet, but it's a goal.
 
If you can do trig identites, you can do integral calculus. This is the system's sneaky way of groovin you into Calc II before you actually get there.
 
I just finished trig identities, solving right triangles, etc. I passed through it fairly well, not finding it difficult. I'm still waiting to hear what my final grade is (took the final for the class yesterday).

I don't know how you guys did that stuff without calculators. :shock:
 
[quote author="orson whitfield"]To think the Concorde was designed using the slide rule. :shock:[/quote]

Wasn't the transistor designed with a slide rule?

Or was the transistor really just alien technology taken from the crash in Roswell? :shock:
 
Heh. That Roswell story is one of the sillier things out of that event (which btw I do believe happened---weather balloon NOT!).

But if you study the history of the atomic theory, quantum mechanics, solid state physics, there is a fairly logical progression to Bardeen Brattain and Shockley. And Lilienfeld invented the FET long before that---it just couldn't work with the techniques of making non-rectifying contacts and the crappy surfaces and material quality of the day.
 
there is no such thing as aliens! :green:

I think that whole roswell/area 51 thing is just the government's way of covering up it's secret testing. "just let the public think what they want to think and we won't say otherwise" is what they are thinking.

i watched an intersting program one late night on the Discovery channel.. it was an informative look into some of the area 51 sightings and scientific approaches to figuring out what happened and what is still happening.

during the show they showed a declassified "commercial" that Bell helicopters made to promote a new product for the government to consider during bidding. A dog was laying next to a shack in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. wind picked up and you could hear it strongly and suddenly a helicopter landed maybe 20 yards from the dog and the shack. you could hear the wind and very little blade chop and the helicopter lifted up and out of the picture. small letters appeared on the screen and said: "Bell helicopters. we really do make silent helicopters". the helicopter was oddly shaped and small but was obviously the real deal.

also during the show, an "ex" area 51 employee explained a few of the strange incidences around the area very logically. Everyone knows the government has been experimenting with medical lasers and has developed a battery powered medical laser belt pack capable of both cutting and fusing flesh. now keep that in mind..

once again another question was posed.. what else has happened out in those desolate areas that the government has tried to keep quiet and on the DL for a long time.. that's right kids, nuclear testing. both above ground nuclear testin and secret underground testing that went on right up until the late 70's. keep that in mind too..

so we have all kinds of radiation, towns full of kids with leukemia that can't be accounted for since the government says everything is ok with the land and water, medical lasers and silent helicopters. we are missing one thing here..

yup, cattle mutilations. so the cattle have been cut up with what looks like a burning instrument that leaves no bleeding and specific parts of the cow(or sheep or whatever) have been taken time and time again with focus being on the liver, gonads, mouth and brain.

what do we get when we add all this up? the government has been secretly monitoring the background radiation levels of the nuclear fallout using barnyard animals that have grazed on or near land that had been once a testing area. the government can't come out and ask people for samples of their tissues for radiation screening( for oh so many reasons..) so they just take it from animals also present in the area. the parts they take are the most suseptable to radiation and they are using the silent helicopters to get them to the sites where they use the lasers to cut the parts out quickly.

people are quick to explain the unknown with ideals of diety or aliens so the governenent allows this to happen because it keeps the heat off of them.

sorry to hijack.. back to our regularly scheduled program..
:guinness:
 
B-b-b-but tin hats are so fashionable!


Really though, I don't believe in a lot of the conspiracy theory stuff that goes around, but I am strangely drawn to them... :twisted:
 
You know what spooks me is that the landed a man on the moon in the sixties. I mean, vacuum tubes must have dominated the Houston Control facility. And no personel computers. Just big ol slow IBM's with those tape drives! No hand held calculators either. Did they even have integrated circuits during that mission?

Mind boggling.
 

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