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Oh, darn (SW assembly goofup and fix)

I was assembling my "sweetest whispers" attenuators a couple days ago, just a tad too early in the morning, and not yet sufficiently caffeinated. With the first one, all went perfectly, but with the second one, I really "screwed the pooch" , bent down pin 1 instead of pin 12, and proceeded to assemble as described, but didn't notice the gaffe until all was completed. After a long torrent of colorful metaphors, I had to decide just how to corect my goof. Unsoldering all the resistors and re-installing them would have been a daunting task, so I looked for an alternative method:

I carefully opened up the switch, removing the contact portion from the front portion, and saw that I could simply relocate the switch contact one position counterclockwise, and that should do it.
Well, all is never as simple as it would seem. The rotorary part of the switch pulled up, and two little steel balls and a spring launched themselves into oblivion.

After another "torrent of colorful metaphors" it was time to attempt to recover the balls and spring. I grabbed my "magnetic broom" (a very powerful Neodymium magnet glued to the end of a broomstick) and swept the area around the workbench, and amazingly found all the vagrant parts - along with lots of other miscellaneous small hardware bits and pieces.

I got the balls and spring back into place, reinserted the rotor, repositioned thw contact, snapped the parts back together, and behold! it works perfectly!

So, before anybody else out there should make the same mistake, first thing to do is to check, recheck then check again, before proceeding.

If the same situation should arise after all that, place a knob on the switch's shaft, and tighten the setscrew, this will prevent the launching of the balls and spring episode. Then do the contact repositioning thing.

Oh, yeah, make sure that you are fully awake and caffeinated before proceeding.

/ed B in NH


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Topic - Oh, darn (SW assembly goofup and fix) - Dyna Saur 05:24:29 02/17/05 (3)


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