Hi all,
Does anyone use the wire wrap technique for prototyping?
What advantages does it offer over using a solder-less
breadboard?
Herb
Stability, plain and simple. No wires falling out, no poor connections, you can move it from room to room or site to site, you can secure the perfboard into something like a final project. Easy to make a changes, just unwind a wire, or cut it off, and wrap a new one on.
herbschwarz:
What advantages does it offer over using a solder-less
breadboard?
A wire wrap prototype can be used for a working product and can be expected to be long term reliable.
A solderless breadboard can stop working as soon as you stop looking at it.
A solderless breadboard can stop working as soon as you stop looking at it
Mine stop working most often while I’m looking at them
How do they know?
Principal disadvantage is the bulk - and the expense, come to think of it.
Perfboard or stripboard and solder is cheaper and also pretty permanent.
I have been using wire wrapping since the mid 70's with great success. Built many a prototype using WW and have had maybe 3 or 4 issues in all these years !! I am still using the refurbished WW gun made by Gardner-Denver that I bought for $ 50.00 back in 1975 !! My 30 AWG bit/sleeve combo has well over 1 million wraps and just keeps on working !! Extremely reliable method for prototypes or even small quantity of production projects.
Not too useful for discretes... you need the "fork" pins for those, also for busses.
I tried wire wrap many years ago. Found it to be more work than point to point wiring on strip board and soldered. Need special and more expensive sockets and pins for wire wrap. Need special tools and wire. My brother swore by wire wrap. Me, for more permanent prototypes, strip board and solder for the last 40+ years. To each his own.
Thank you, all. There is much food for thought here!
Aarg, by "fork" pins, do you mean like Vector
klipwrap terminals, with 2 or 3 "fingers" on top & WW
pin below? Do I have to solder a discrete
component to them?
Herb
Its probably worse than a breadboard for high speed stuff due to the stray capacitance between everything.
It causes a lot of eye-fatigue in my experience, but its ultra-reliable technology as the joints are gas-tight
cold welded.