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November 1972 Popular Electronics
 Table of Contents
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles
from
Popular Electronics,
published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.
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If you are a seasoned
reader of episodes of "Mac's Service Shop," you might have noticed that the stories
almost always begin with either Mac or Barney commenting on the weather, which corresponds
to the time of year in which the story was originally published. Note the reference
to the "bleak, cold November morning" in this 1972 edition of Popular Electronics
magazine. This time around, the boss and trusty employee discuss the value of electronics
kits, Heathkits in particular. BTW, Heathkit is now making an impressive comeback into the kit realm
with new designs. Manuals for some of the more popular vintage Heathkit projects
are available again, which are a welcome thing to collectors. They also are producing
some replacement assemblies, like for replacing old Nixie tube displays with LEDs
(of course most people would probably rather have replacement Nixie tubes). Back
in the 1970s, before everything we bought was assembled in far away lands using
pseudo-slave labor, it was often less expensive to buy a kit of parts and put together
you own television or radio. It was also an era when electronics service shops still
did a brisk business fixing appliances, and building such devices were part of the
schooling process for up-and-coming technicians. Every study-at-home
electronics course included a color television, AM/FM stereo, and even build-it-yourself
oscilloscopes, among other items. As Barney notes, there is something exciting to
us nerds about opening a huge kit of electronics components, cables, hardware, and
chassis parts. Here is my
Heathkit IM-17 Utility Solid-State Voltmeter that includes the
entire Assembly Manual, which confirms the claim of completeness.
Mac's Service Shop: Philosophy of a Kit Manufacturer
By John T. Frye, W9EGV, KHD4167
 When Barney entered the service department,
still shivering a bit from the bleak, cold November morning, he found Mac, his employer,
thumbing through the pages of a catalog.
"Hey, you've got a new Heathkit catalog!" the youth exclaimed. "How come I don't
have mine?"
"Rank has its privileges," Mac replied with a teasing grin. "This came sort of
special delivery when Gene, my old friend with the Heath Company, dropped in for
a short visit last evening and left it."
"I suppose you two went at it hammer and tongs as usual," Barney said. "I can
just hear you nit-picking the assembly instructions for the last kit you put together
that didn't work perfectly the first time you turned it on, and I can hear Gene
countering with scornful remarks about crusty old service technicians who never
really learned how to make a decent solder joint and who stubbornly refuse to follow
clear step-by-step instruction in the manual."
"You must have been listening," Mac chuckled reminiscently. "But then we settled
down and Gene gave me a lot of information on the painstaking steps that are taken
to see to it that a Heathkit is as error-free and fool-proof - both in design and
in the instruction manual - as possible before it is put on the market. I think
you, or anyone else who ever put a kit together, will find this interesting."
"I'm all ears," Barney invited, settling himself comfortably on the end of the
service bench.
"Okay, after an engineering design has been frozen - I hate that barbarism 'finalized'
- it is turned over to the Manual Department for publications treatment. The Manual
Department gets six sets of parts and an operating prototype of the kit. Using these,
the author of the manual evolves a general building procedure and step-by-step sequence.
He strives to simplify wiring, to avoid redundancy of parts, to arrange complex
wiring in proper layers, and to avoid more than four soldered connections to a single
point. This last, of course, is to avoid rosin joints or the possibility bottom
wires will stack up unsoldered because heat from the iron does not reach them. Working
in collaboration with the design engineer, the author actually builds the kit, making
careful handwritten notes of every procedure. After a preliminary check this written
material is turned over to a typist for initial typing.
Pre-Proofing and Proof-Building. "Next comes the pre-proof cycle.
The design engineer and the author build the kit from the author's notes. This brings
to light many obvious errors and spotlights a need for improvement in the sequence
of several steps. After these corrections and modifications have been included in
the written instructions, the kit is ready for the proof-building stage.
"The instructions are reproduced on a Xerox machine, and a proof-build program
is scheduled involving 18 to 20 people, depending on the complexity of the kit.
These proof-builders represent a cross-section of capable engineering people, marketing
people, customer services people, production and office personnel, and always one
or two novices. A novice is defined as someone who has never assembled a kit product
before. By necessity these are always Heath employees, and they are issued kits
on a Friday afternoon to take home and assemble from the Xerox-prepared instructions.
If the kit is fairly complex, they may be allowed two weekends with the due date
on a Monday morning; but quite often the proof-builds are due back on the Monday
following the Friday they were issued.
"As these people assemble their kits, they keep track of their time and are encouraged
to write their comments directly in the 'manual' at the appropriate place where
difficulty was encountered or an error detected. If the kit does not perform correctly
when completed, the proof-builder is encouraged to try to locate and correct the
trouble himself if he can; but working or not, the proof-builds must be turned over
to an evaluation engineering group on the due date. This group is entirely separate
from the engineering design group, and their function is to see how well the completed
kits perform - if they perform at all - and to determine what is wrong if they will
not work. Is the failure due to a defective component? To incorrect assembly or
wiring? To a manual error?
"Finally the proof-builders meet with the engineering evaluation group, and individual
experiences and suggestions are gone over in great detail to determine what changes,
if any, are needed. Sometimes a different value of component is recommended, or
a supplier is required to tighten up his quality control, or holes in the chassis
must be changed, or instructions need to be clarified. Out of all this information
comes the data that formulates the final pack, parts count, and final manual. Occasionally,
however, when the proof-build corrections and changes are excessive, the company
may elect to hold a 'post-proof-build.' This is a second proofing stage beyond the
proof-build to verify that all the changes and corrections have been caught in the
final printing. This post-proof build usually involves only one or two builds."
"Man, they ought to have all the bugs out by that time!" Barney exclaimed.
"They still don't take that for granted. As a final check, the tenth pack of
the first production run for the product is pulled off the line by quality control
and built again to make sure nothing has happened during the interim between engineering
sign-off and the initial production run. And the first production run is not shipped
until completion and verification of the production proof by quality control. Formal
reports are required at each stage."
"Well, that explains why I am so often frustrated when I'm building a kit and
think I've finally caught them leaving out an essential part or shorting me on hardware
or making a goof in the manual. Invariably the missing item shows up tucked away
in some obscure corner of the carton or in one of the sacks I've discarded as empty;
and the glaring mistake in the manual turns out to be a mistake in my careless reading
of it."
"Know what you mean," Mac nodded. "It's sort of like the bitter-sweet feeling
you have when your checkbook won't agree with the bank statement and you're practically
sure the bank has finally made an error; but then, on the tenth review, you discover
a subtraction error in your checkbook."
''I'll bet you gave Gene a lot of Why Dontcha's," Barney hazarded.
Kit Philosophy of the Company. "Naturally," Mac said with a
grin. "But he knocked them down as fast as I tossed them up. Out of my suggestions
and his patient explanations of why the ideas were not practical, I think I acquired
some insight into the 'kit philosophy' of the company. I believe the same philosophy
applies to any other kit instrument manufacturer who puts out quality products.
"First is the idea nothing should be done for the builder that he can do well
for himself. Doing so increases the cost of the kit and deprives the builder of
much of the pride he has in the finished product. If wires are cut to length, sub-assemblies
are all put together, and instructions are obviously written for a seven-year-old,
the labor involved in doing all this will add very materially to the cost of the
kit, since labor is a major item in the cost of any product these days. At the same
time, the builder will be made to feel the manufacturer is holding his wrists at
every step of the assembly, and this will subtract materially from any feeling of
personal accomplishment. Money saved by allowing the builder to furnish as much
labor as possible and by assuming he is an intelligent human being can be spent
to improve the quality of the kit instrument while still keeping its price below
that of an inferior assembled unit."
"Makes sense," Barney agreed. "Sometimes I gripe and growl when I encounter a
tedious procedure in a kit assembly (preparing lengths of coaxial cable, for instance)
but I get the job done; and I certainly would not want to pay some high-priced worker
to do it for me. After all, the average kit builder is very likely a special breed
who really enjoys putting kits together. He doesn't buy a kit instrument just because
it costs less than a comparable assembled unit. He savors every moment of the assembly
from the time he opens the carton, sniffs that indescribable aroma of new insulation
and lacquer, and catches his first peek at the exciting colors and shapes of still-unrecognized
items, until he proudly peels the backing from the little blue model label and presses
it against the chassis. He has watched something grow entirely under his own hands
from a jumbled mess of parts to an attractive, reliable device."
"Spoken like a real aficionado!" Mac said. "But whether or not a person assembles
or uses kit instruments, I strongly feel he and the entire electronic industry owe
a debt to kit manufacturers. They have made it possible for many service technicians,
experimenters, and radio amateurs to purchase and become familiar with equipment
they could not otherwise afford. Many a small shop opens for business with a service
bench full of Heathkit or other manufacturers' kit-type instruments. Then as the
business prospers and the technician's time becomes more valuable, he tends to purchase
assembled replacement instruments. I'll bet if you could get the figures, you'd
find kit instrument manufacturers really have helped the sale of all instrument
manufacturers.
"Yeah," Barney agreed. "Many a person enters the electronics field by the act
of putting together a simple kit. Once he learns he can wire a bunch of parts together
and make an instrument that really works, he is hooked for life. 'Who says electronics
is black magic?' he asks himself as he signs up for a correspondence course in electronics
or heads for an engineering course in college."
"Speaking of education," Mac concluded, "I've always admired the kit manufacturers'
efforts in this area. They try to tell the builder not only how to assemble the
instrument but also why it works as it does. Every manual has a 'Circuit Description'
section. Heath's color-TV receiver manuals include what is actually an excellent
short course in color-TV theory and practice. I consider this most commendable."
Posted March 15, 2024
(updated from original post
on 10/11/2017)
Mac's Radio Service Shop Episodes on RF Cafe
This series of instructive
technodrama™
stories was the brainchild of none other than John T. Frye, creator of the
Carl and Jerry series that ran in
Popular Electronics for many years. "Mac's Radio Service Shop" began life
in April 1948 in Radio News
magazine (which later became Radio & Television News, then
Electronics
World), and changed its name to simply "Mac's Service Shop" until the final
episode was published in a 1977
Popular Electronics magazine. "Mac" is electronics repair shop owner Mac
McGregor, and Barney Jameson his his eager, if not somewhat naive, technician assistant.
"Lessons" are taught in story format with dialogs between Mac and Barney.
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