Soldering Switchcraft #228 pancakes

[Shiny_Beast]

I went to spin up a couple of these with some monorail and had the damndest time. It jept measureing a couple k between the live wire and ground, but only sometimes depending how I bent the wire, twisted the plug etc...I thought maybe I cooked the monorail, but I eventually tracked it down to the plug?!?

I think I put to much solder in the center hole where the live wire goes, so under the right kind oif stress the plug would stat to conduct?

Anybody know what mught be going on here, what I did wrong. I changed the plug and all seems good right now, but I'd like to know what I did wrong.

Thanks

[SteveO]

It's entirely possible that you left a solder blob big enough to short to the plug case and ground it out.

[plan-x]

Sometimes one can overheat the ground braid in the cable near the end and that will melt a littlle hole into the inner wire insulation. When the cable is bent a certain way the exposed wires touch and short. Cut off an inch and start again.

[Shiny_Beast]

I Inspected the wire pretty close. the kick was measering the opposite plug showed the 3k when the other end was soldered. Once I unsoldered the other end the reading went back to overload.

the bad plug of course would only show the problem when the cable was soldered to it, a real head scratcher. I'm going with the blob of solder down the center hole theary I think.

[KBN]

Did you strip the inner black layer back?


That is likely semi-conductive to increase the shielding. If you don't strip that back as well it can lead to the problem you are having. I don't have any experience with the Monorail cable, but that has proved true with other brands of cable.

[Shiny_Beast]

No I didn't, interesting thought. Maybe that's the problem. I'm gonna peel that inner stuff back to the white on the next one. thanks

[plan-x]

Oh Yeah! This is true. That black sheath on the inner wire has to be stripped back so there's no contact with the "tip" solder point.

[pixelchemist]

i generally slit, rather than completely remove the inner plastic (white) and pull the inner wire out of the slit to the center lug... this leaves the white plastic in place to act as a shield between the housing in the wire.