On Mar 6, 2012, at 6:58 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
(I use a G-D electric gun and an Augat stripper).
I've got boards
that I assembled more than 20 years ago still working fine.
I don't see why they wouldn't; the wire-wrapping process actually
cold-welds the wire to the corners of the pin and makes a fairly
gas-tight seal. If you're providing the correct amount of relief
with unstripped wire at the end of the wrap, there's no reason your
connections shouldn't last longer than a soldered one; it's actually
less stress on the joint.
Of course, the outside of the wrap starts to look pretty ugly pretty
quickly, so perhaps people just assume they'll go bad quickly if
they've never used wire-wrap.
I should also point out that all of the original Macintosh
prototypes were wire-wrapped, which should probably indicate that
it's a pretty sound methodology for assembling microcomputers.
It worked well enough in '83, anyway.
- Dave