soldering extensions onto a potentiometer

Mar 30, 2012 8 Replies
A

I have a potentiometer that I unsoldered from an old circuit board (from a junked appliance) & I'd like to play with it in circuits on my breadboard. The potentiometer has leads bent at 90°, with holes at the top, & looks close to this picture:



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The leads are spaced almost exactly 1.5 times the spacing of the holes in my breadboard, so I can't quite wedge it into them. I'm thinking of soldering a piece of hook-up wire to each lead, but I'm not sure how to make a mechanically sound connection, especially to the middle one, before soldering. Suggestions?



When Elaine turned 11, her mother sent her to train under Donald Knuth in his mountain hideaway. [XKCD 342]
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J

I'd probably take two pair of needle-nose pliers and carefully rotate the outer two leads by 90°, then you can bend them inward to make the spacing.

(Or drill two extra holes, plus some small bus wire to close the gap :-) ...Jim Thompson

| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
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J

If you can solder properly, the solder joint will be strong enough to use in a breadboard. What I'd do would be to cut off the narrowed part of each lead, then tin the pot leads and the wires and use a pair of long nose pliers to squeeze the tinned end of the wire against the length of the lead while I reflowed the solder. Afterwards, I'd bend the free ends of the wires so they'd plug into the breadboard nicely.
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M

It won't matter one bit.

It's for breadboarding, if/when the wire eventually breaks off (and wire=20 thin enough to fit breadboards is likely to break when stressed before the= =20 joint breaks, you just resolder a new wire to the pot. It's not like it=20 will be in a box where access is difficult.

But "mechanically sound" is from the old days of tubes. Not only was the= =20 wire thick (and thus putting stress on the solder connection) but the=20 components were big too, meaning the joint had to support the extra=20 weight. Some of it was overkill too, wrap the wire through the hole on=20 the tube socket a time or two, then solder.

SInce semiconductors took over, wire is thinner (since generally it isn't= =20 carrying much current or voltage) and components are lighter. IN some=20 circumstances, like something used in a car or carried around a lot, it=20 probably makes sense to worry somewhat about being "mechanically sound".=20 But for the average home made piece of equipment solder is good enough, as= =20 long as it's a good solder joint.

Michael

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S

Adam Funk wrote in news:gggh49xmlm.ln2 @news.ducksburg.com:

use a piece of an old IC plugin adapter.

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A

That works! I was thinking inside the box.

...the reason why so many professional artists drink a lot is not necessarily very much to do with the artistic temperament, etc. It is simply that they can afford to, because they can normally take a large part of a day off to deal with the ravages. [Amis _On Drink_]
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J

Great! Glad it worked for you! (I've done it before :-) ...Jim Thompson

| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
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A

And it sits reasonably firmly in the breadboard so it's easy to turn the knob. Thanks again!

I used to be better at logic problems, before I just dumped them all into TeX and let Knuth pick out the survivors. -- plorkwort
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K

It wasn't useful then, either. A proper solder joint is stronger than the component lead. The only thing it accomplished was to make sure the component didn't move while the solder was fluid, causing a cold joint.

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