Patch Wires

[Kristeen Cheek]

Helloall!

First question from a newby. How does one make holes in board for wires? In other words, how would i make a hole in a board to insert a wire instead of a pin connector for example?

Thank you all!

Thank you! I will try that. I am making a board and wanted to hard wire (solder) it to another board without using a pin connector. I was afraid the connector would come loose and couldnt find the correct connector on DIGIKEY which would lock the connection. So, I figured I would just solder the wires to the board to keep them from coming loose.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you. I am using PCBWAY to make the board. THey asked me for a centroid (pick and place) file for the board which I never had to provide before but I think I might have forgotten to check a box or something.

Thanks again for quick response.

Thank you. Just looked it up on DIGIKEY. The other end (female) has to be made with the wires though? It would need to have wires installed and connected for the other connector. This is something PCBWAY could do? Sorry for all the questions.

Thank you in advance!

Yes, PCBWAY makes the boards and orders the parts and makes the boards for me.

I had them make boards before with 3-pin connectors but this time I thought I would try the hard wire idea. But the friction-lock pin connector looks like a good idea if PCBWAY would install the wires in the opposite (female) connector for me to connect the two boards together.

These are crimp connectors. The original crimp tool might be quite expensive. But with a bit of skill you can do it with a needle-nosed plier. (or with a cheap all purpose crimp tool)

There are also suppliers out there who sell them with short wires pre attached.

Yes, thats what I need. Pre-order is good. Its for a product im developing and have taught myself everything about electronics, CAD, 3-D printing and ordering through china. Keep hitting snags with the electronics. Simple board but not so simple for someone with zero background.

Thank you for your help.

Im sure it will get me through to the next hurdle.

Glad this website is here.

i was just looking at a computer fan in my office and noticed the connector on it.

I found a few online with the wires already connected.

Ill see if I can get China to add them to the next design batch i make

Thanks again for the help

Much appreciated

Another option is to use net classes, which work in the schematic now too. You can set a schematic color for a netclass and all wires for the net members of that class will get the color (unless the wire is overridden with a specific color of its own)

Wires are used to bear mechanical loads, often in the form of wire rope. In electricity and telecommunications signals, a "wire" can refer to an electrical cable, which can contain a "solid core" of a single wire or separate strands in stranded or braided forms.

Usually cylindrical in geometry, wire can also be made in square, hexagonal, flattened rectangular, or other cross-sections, either for decorative purposes, or for technical purposes such as high-efficiency voice coils in loudspeakers. Edge-wound coil springs, such as the Slinky toy, are made of special flattened wire.[1]

Square and hexagonal wires were possibly made using a swaging technique. In this method a metal rod was struck between grooved metal blocks, or between a grooved punch and a grooved metal anvil. Swaging is of great antiquity, possibly dating to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE in Egypt and in the Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe for torcs and fibulae. Twisted square-section wires are a very common filigree decoration in early Etruscan jewelry.

In about the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, a new category of decorative tube was introduced which imitated a line of granules. True beaded wire, produced by mechanically distorting a round-section wire, appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy in the seventh century BCE, perhaps disseminated by the Phoenicians. Beaded wire continued to be used in jewellery into modern times, although it largely fell out of favour in about the tenth century CE when two drawn round wires, twisted together to form what are termed 'ropes', provided a simpler-to-make alternative. A forerunner to beaded wire may be the notched strips and wires which first occur from around 2000 BCE in Anatolia.

Wire was drawn in England from the medieval period. The wire was used to make wool cards and pins, manufactured goods whose import was prohibited by Edward IV in 1463.[5] The first wire mill in Great Britain was established at Tintern in about 1568 by the founders of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works, who had a monopoly on this.[6] Apart from their second wire mill at nearby Whitebrook,[7] there were no other wire mills before the second half of the 17th century. Despite the existence of mills, the drawing of wire down to fine sizes continued to be done manually.

According to a description in the early 20th century, "[w]ire is usually drawn of cylindrical form; but it may be made of any desired section by varying the outline of the holes in the draw-plate through which it is passed in the process of manufacture. The draw-plate or die is a piece of hard cast-iron or hard steel, or for fine work it may be a diamond or a ruby. The object of utilising precious stones is to enable the dies to be used for a considerable period without losing their size, and so producing wire of incorrect diameter. Diamond dies must be rebored when they have lost their original diameter of hole, but metal dies are brought down to size again by hammering up the hole and then drifting it out to correct diameter with a punch."[8]

Wire is often reduced to the desired diameter and properties by repeated drawing through progressively smaller dies, or traditionally holes in draw plates. After a number of passes the wire may be annealed to facilitate more drawing or, if it is a finished product, to maximise ductility and conductivity.

Electrical wires are usually covered with insulating materials, such as plastic, rubber-like polymers, or varnish. Insulating and jacketing of wires and cables is nowadays done by passing them through an extruder. Formerly, materials used for insulation included treated cloth or paper and various oil-based products. Since the mid-1960s, plastic and polymers exhibiting properties similar to rubber have predominated.

Two or more wires may be wrapped concentrically, separated by insulation, to form coaxial cable. The wire or cable may be further protected with substances like paraffin, some kind of preservative compound, bitumen, lead, aluminum sheathing, or steel taping. Stranding or covering machines wind material onto wire which passes through quickly. Some of the smallest machines for cotton covering have a large drum, which grips the wire and moves it through toothed gears; the wire passes through the centre of disks mounted above a long bed, and the disks carry each a number of bobbins varying from six to twelve or more in different machines. A supply of covering material is wound on each bobbin, and the end is led on to the wire, which occupies a central position relatively to the bobbins; the latter being revolved at a suitable speed bodily with their disks, the cotton is consequently served on to the wire, winding in spiral fashion so as to overlap. If many strands are required the disks are duplicated, so that as many as sixty spools may be carried, the second set of strands being laid over the first.[8]

For heavier cables that are used for electric light and power as well as submarine cables, the machines are somewhat different in construction. The wire is still carried through a hollow shaft, but the bobbins or spools of covering material are set with their spindles at right angles to the axis of the wire, and they lie in a circular cage which rotates on rollers below. The various strands coming from the spools at various parts of the circumference of the cage all lead to a disk at the end of the hollow shaft. This disk has perforations through which each of the strands pass, thence being immediately wrapped on the cable, which slides through a bearing at this point. Toothed gears having certain definite ratios are used to cause the winding drum for the cable and the cage for the spools to rotate at suitable relative speeds which do not vary. The cages are multiplied for stranding with many tapes or strands, so that a machine may have six bobbins on one cage and twelve on the other.[8]

Solid wire, also called solid-core or single-strand wire, consists of one piece of metal wire. Solid wire is useful for wiring breadboards. Solid wire is cheaper to manufacture than stranded wire and is used where there is little need for flexibility in the wire. Solid wire also provides mechanical ruggedness; and, because it has relatively less surface area which is exposed to attack by corrosives, protection against the environment.

Stranded wire is composed of a number of small wires bundled or wrapped together to form a larger conductor. Stranded wire is more flexible than solid wire of the same total cross-sectional area. Stranded wire is used when higher resistance to metal fatigue is required. Such situations include connections between circuit boards in multi-printed-circuit-board devices, where the rigidity of solid wire would produce too much stress as a result of movement during assembly or servicing; A.C. line cords for appliances; musical instrument cables; computer mouse cables; welding electrode cables; control cables connecting moving machine parts; mining machine cables; trailing machine cables; and numerous others. At high frequencies, current travels near the surface of the wire because of the skin effect, resulting in increased power loss in the wire. Stranded wire might seem to reduce this effect, since the total surface area of the strands is greater than the surface area of the equivalent solid wire, but ordinary stranded wire does not reduce the skin effect because all the strands are short-circuited together and behave as a single conductor. A stranded wire will have higher resistance than a solid wire of the same diameter because the cross-section of the stranded wire is not all copper; there are unavoidable gaps between the strands (this is the circle packing problem for circles within a circle). A stranded wire with the same cross-section of conductor as a solid wire is said to have the same equivalent gauge and is always a larger diameter. However, for many high-frequency applications, proximity effect is more severe than skin effect, and in some limited cases, simple stranded wire can reduce proximity effect. For better performance at high frequencies, litz wire, which has the individual strands insulated and twisted in special patterns, may be used.

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