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North Star / Disk Data Format / Horizon vs. Advantage
- Thread starter haglebu
- Start date
Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
There is also the issue of the forgotten crimp.
I remember some years ago the entire 12V system in a boat I had going down. Everything suddenly dead.
Luckily the boat was in dry dock, it would have been a PITA out at sea. After some time I found that the main 12V feed from the battery apparently was not coming through the main 12V isolation switch.
At first I thought that the switch had probably failed. When I unmounted it from the panel it was on, I found the main feed wire from the battery + terminal had never been crimped at the factory and was just poked into the hole in the large crimp lug. Nobody noticed and it had some red plastic insulation over it making any inspection impossible. This is what happens at factories when its Friday or people are in a rush.
But the point is, regardless of the termination method, soldering or crimping, clamping by screw terminals etc, there is no excuse for just doing it and not inspecting it afterwards.
Crimping of course revolutionized high speed production and assembly, but along with that speed, increased the opportunities for failing to inspect the work, the process created a race. The fault in my SOL-20 with the bad crimping also would never have occurred, regardless of how inept the operator was, bad tooling etc, if it had been inspected properly at the factory after it was done.
I remember some years ago the entire 12V system in a boat I had going down. Everything suddenly dead.
Luckily the boat was in dry dock, it would have been a PITA out at sea. After some time I found that the main 12V feed from the battery apparently was not coming through the main 12V isolation switch.
At first I thought that the switch had probably failed. When I unmounted it from the panel it was on, I found the main feed wire from the battery + terminal had never been crimped at the factory and was just poked into the hole in the large crimp lug. Nobody noticed and it had some red plastic insulation over it making any inspection impossible. This is what happens at factories when its Friday or people are in a rush.
But the point is, regardless of the termination method, soldering or crimping, clamping by screw terminals etc, there is no excuse for just doing it and not inspecting it afterwards.
Crimping of course revolutionized high speed production and assembly, but along with that speed, increased the opportunities for failing to inspect the work, the process created a race. The fault in my SOL-20 with the bad crimping also would never have occurred, regardless of how inept the operator was, bad tooling etc, if it had been inspected properly at the factory after it was done.
Dwight Elvey
Veteran Member
Crimping and boats do not mix well. In fact wiring in general do not mix well with boats. Even soldered connection fail with salt water. I still think soldered connections work better than crimped. I have a sailboat ( I should sell it as I'm too old to deal with it). I cover everything electrical with stuff called liquid insulation.
I look at all these people determined to drive through flood water and newer cars. Cars are not boats. If it doesn't kill the engine, they think everything will be fine. Everything in the new cars is controlled by some uP circuit and none of them like water. A few months later, they'll find that things stop working. Most of the connectors have some simple moisture protection but that doesn't mean they will hold up to submersing in water. It is like a time bomb. A constant 12V from the battery and wires turn to green powder.
I don't think they realize that driving through water over the rim of their wheels is likely to cause them to need a new car in a few months.
Dwight
I look at all these people determined to drive through flood water and newer cars. Cars are not boats. If it doesn't kill the engine, they think everything will be fine. Everything in the new cars is controlled by some uP circuit and none of them like water. A few months later, they'll find that things stop working. Most of the connectors have some simple moisture protection but that doesn't mean they will hold up to submersing in water. It is like a time bomb. A constant 12V from the battery and wires turn to green powder.
I don't think they realize that driving through water over the rim of their wheels is likely to cause them to need a new car in a few months.
Dwight
Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
In the past Acheh was hit by catastrophic floods.Crimping and boats do not mix well. In fact wiring in general do not mix well with boats. Even soldered connection fail with salt water. I still think soldered connections work better than crimped. I have a sailboat ( I should sell it as I'm too old to deal with it). I cover everything electrical with stuff called liquid insulation.
I look at all these people determined to drive through flood water and newer cars. Cars are not boats. If it doesn't kill the engine, they think everything will be fine. Everything in the new cars is controlled by some uP circuit and none of them like water. A few months later, they'll find that things stop working. Most of the connectors have some simple moisture protection but that doesn't mean they will hold up to submersing in water. It is like a time bomb. A constant 12V from the battery and wires turn to green powder.
I don't think they realize that driving through water over the rim of their wheels is likely to cause them to need a new car in a few months.
Dwight
Most of the cars floated away to another part of town and were at some stage under water.
After that, all of the older cars that had Kettering ignition systems were recovered by spraying WD-40 into the distributors and other places. Every modern car with a complex wiring harness and CPU was damaged beyond repair. There is something to be said for simple electrical systems in cars.
Also, there is something else about complex electrical systems in petrol powered cars. The conversion of the energy from petrol to rotational power of a shaft, by the engine, is very roughly 40% efficient. The conversion of rotational power of the shaft via a dynamo or alternator is about 60 to 70% efficient. So , in the car, the conversion of petrol energy to electrical energy is typical less than 0.6 x 0.4, or less than 30% efficient.
So, every time you add an "electrically consuming sub-system" to your petrol powered car it is not good. Didn't stop manufacturers from doing it.
Early small 4 cylinder cars, say a Morris Minor, consumed less than 400W electrical power (headlamps on and blower motor on and engine running). In more modern cars it got to over a kilowatt or more electrical consumption (electric steering, G'box controls, radiator fans, electronic fuel injection etc etc etc). So much so, that high capacity alternators had to be used that could also charge the battery at idle, and, when suddenly electrically loaded, they could stall the idling motor. So the manufacturers of alternator voltage regulators, had to go away from the simple and effective voltage regulators inside the alternator, and had to invent LRC (load response control) and have that in the car's ECU, to slow down the alternator's response to a sudden load.
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