I'm trying to purchase/locate a wiring pencil. I am unable to locate any US based companies selling these. Can anyone suggest where I might be able to purchase such a pen like the roadrunner or verowire?
Thanks, George
BTW - As you could have surmised I live in the US ;)
AIIIIEEEEE!!! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!! I got stuck having to use one of those once, and they're a nightmare. For one thing, all they're good for is daisy-chaining, and the resulting daisy chain is all wrong if you ever have to unwrap just one or two connections. And you need a special chisel to cut the wire at the end of a run, and you have to waste a few inches of wire when you start a thing, etc, etc, etc...
No special chisel required although I think that you're right, the tool did come with a flat-bladed cutter back in the dark ages when I got it. Haven't seen that gizmo for years. A good set of wire cutters works just as well (better, perhaps).
But it is Da Bomb for daisy-chaining. I rarely use it (or any wire wrap) nowadays but I do have a "duty" CPLD on a break-out board with
0.1" headers -- for prototyping or the occasional glue -- and it's by far the fastest way to collect and tie all of the unused pins.
Of course, it must have been an automobile then cos these RoadRunners have a brake as optional. I haven't seen any "leggy birds" with that provision.....
I've done some daisy-chaining in my day, but I soldered wire-wrap wire point-to-point. I filed the rivet off the blade of a WSU-30, and clamped the blade in an X-Acto handle. I'd strip a few inches of insulation, solder the end to the first pin, then loop the wire around and lay the insulated part of the wire along the path I intended to take. I'd grab the wire there with the tweezers, slide it into the stripper blade, and slide that chunk of insulation right up to the joint. Then, of course, the insulation was exactly the right length for the next joint. If I needed to daisy-chain them, I'd just keep doing the same thing. These sockets are all already tacked on Vector Pad-Per-Hole, of course. :-)
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