February 28, 1964 Electronics
[Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Electronics,
published 1930 - 1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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A well-laid-out and routed chassis,
control panel, equipment rack, or circuit breaker panel has always invoked the same sort
of appreciation and awe in me that a Rembrandt painting invokes in an art cognoscente
or a Beethoven concert invokes in a music aficionado. Many moons ago when I work as an
electrician, I prided myself in obsessively neat and orderly runs of conduit and Romex™
cable (with no twists), squarely mounted receptacle and switch boxes, and rigid compliance
with NEC requirements. Once I entered into the RF and microwave realm, an entirely new
kind of eye candy appeared in the form of semi-rigid coaxial cable and waveguide runs.
Knowing the technical (electrical) requirements and limitations based on power, wavelength,
and VSWR concerns served to enhance the appreciation. Electrical wiring has its own unique
requirements for bend radii, enclosure fill, and voltage levels, due to heating, mechanical
stress, and voltage induction issues. RF transmission media adds to that signal reflections
due to contamination and cross-section perturbations, dissimilar junction spurious mixing
products, microphonics, common mode currents, and a host of other idiosyncrasies. The
photos in this article, of course, caught my eye and had to be reproduced for
like-minded people.
Production Techniques - Fixtures Form Semirigid Coax
Close tolerances and tight specs maintain electrical characteristics

Shields are soldered to interconnect bracket, and inner conductors
are soldered inside the bracket, in this phase comparator assembly

Forming method employed with adjustable fixture is shown by first
five photos (see text for details). Shield is trimmed and removed. Parts are then assembled.
Deer Park, N. Y. - Production employees used to working with conventional wire and
cable can readily switch to fabricating assemblies of the relatively new semirigid coaxial
cable - if suitable forming fixtures are used and if cable specifications are chosen
to avoid production problems.
Methods must be worked out carefully because even seemingly insignificant liberties
in manufacturing and design can introduce marked changes in VSWR, impedance match and
other electrical characteristics, according to manufacturing engineers at Airborne Instruments
Laboratory, a division of Cutler-Hammer.
AIL uses semirigid coaxial cable for crossover hybrids, phase comparators and similar
devices because of its excellent shielding qualities and the ease with which precise
electrical length can be obtained. In assembly fabrication, mechanical length tolerances
of ±0.005 inch are standard and ±0.002 inch can be held. Bend radii of
5/16th inch are repeatedly achieved, without damage to the cable or change in electrical
characteristics.
Forming the Cable - To form the cable, AIL developed fixtures designed
to eliminate as much as possible the kinks, score marks, burrs and other defects that
would change the electrical characteristics.
When a large run of similar parts is required, a special-purpose fixture is generally
best. For short runs, AIL uses adjustable fixtures like the one shown in the series of
photographs. This fixture has removable bending mandrels, a vernier scale for positioning
the cable, and a holding device.
Operations illustrated include: (1) clamping the cable in the fixture; (2) bending
the cable 90 degrees around the post; (3) repositioning the cable and bending again to
form a U; (4) making another 90-deg bend; (5) shifting the post to another position so
the cable end will swing over the top of the fixture.
Trimming the Shield - In the next photo, the metal shield is cut
by a motorized trimmer. The machine is set to cut only the shield, to an accuracy of
0.0001 inch. The cut end of the shield is removed with pliers, leaving the Teflon dielectric
to protect the inner conductor.
The original blank measured 4.700 ±0.002 inches; 0.750 ±0.001 inch was
trimmed from each end; the finished part meas-ures 3.200 ±0.004 inches. Parts
such as this are used to assemble intricate devices, such as the phase comparator seen
in the last photo.
Soldering Interconnections - Precisely dimensioned interconnect brackets
make assembly easier and prevent impedance mismatches and excessive vswr. The cut ends
of the shielding are soldered to the outside of the bracket, in the assembly shown, while
the inner conductors are soldered together inside the bracket.
One of the soldering problems is that the heat of soldering causes the Teflon to extrude
from the joint. Trimming the Teflon back to the joint allows the remaining Teflon to
spring back inside the outer shield. In both cases, electrical characteristics are changed.
This must be accounted for in the design.
Some manufacturing problems can be solved by careful attention to cable procurement.
Sliding or relative motion between the center conductor and outer shield (caused by Teflon's
low friction) was eliminated by compressing the dielectric within the shield. Wrinkling
and cracking of the shield during bending was avoided by specifying a minimum elongation.
Posted August 27, 2018
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