[Collins] (no subject)

[Gerald]

On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 06:21 -0500, david knepper wrote:
> Lee, if you find one, yes, there was book a published by Collins that did
> cover this subject..  Unfortunately, the CRA does not have one. I believe
> that its contents covered more than just soldering, however.  I bet that the
> CRA technical advisor, Dr. Gerald Johnson would know.

I'm sure there was a production standards book. Its not the sort of
thing they would have released when a worker left the plant or their
employ. Company confidential. Just like there was a design standards
manual and a preferred parts manual. That production standards book
should have covered soldering, cable lacing, cable assembly, mechanical
assembly, welding, finishing, and maybe packing for shipping. I didn't
work in production so I never saw a copy.
> 
> The production workers went through a rigid program to learn the correct
> techniques of soldering.  Can you imagine that occurred before the advent of
> the modern soldering gun.

The "modern" soldering iron such as made by Weller was NOT allowed in
the manufacturing plant. Its almost never the right temperature and the
other brand (Wen) could get up to a red glow after which it needed a new
tip before it would solder again. I've used a Weller for ham projects
many times and when I needed to solder one connection every half hour
while trouble shooting and repairing it was a workable tool, but for
production soldering waiting 8 seconds for the gun to melt solder for
each connection was intolerable. In that 8 seconds an already hot
soldering iron would have allowed the connection to have been completed
and not be left too cold or be overheated. 

>  Most of the production workers were "farm girls"
> who meticulously soldered each connection with an old-fashioned soldering
> iron.  These ladies were experts to be sure and were very adept in
> controlling those hot irons.  All soldering connections were inspected and a
> daub of red paint was applied.  I can tell you that I would never put my
> soldering skills up against any of those ladies!

If you did a solder connection every ten seconds all day, it wouldn't
take long to get good.

While there was quite a bit of farm territory around Anamosa and Cedar
Rapids, the Cedar Rapids population was on the order to 100,000 and many
families in that city were technically inclined working for Collins and
other technical companies both younger and older than Collins Radio.

> 
> Thanks
> 
> Dave, W3ST

I know that production took engineering drawings and then created
production documents used only on the production line with none
engineering type details for lead dress and wire dress and often with
photo identification of the parts and their final position. I've read
that to ease production in some radio the wiring harness as done in
engineering was significantly lengthened to make wiring easier and in
some designs that broke the first production radios.

I trained "pilot line girls" in Texas to read engineering drawings so
they could build in the high power transmitter lab without that
intermediate production process. They were already good at soldering,
but a little slow at engineering drawings and wiring to-from charts. In
building one run of D/A converters for the 821A-1, production managed to
send me a new pair each week. The only trouble was that it took just
over a week to get them up to speed to finish a box and a lab tech and I
spent Saturday (and I didn't get overtime) finishing each box and Sunday
installing and testing it. Then with a new pair it took out my next
weekend. After three of those I rebelled and complained to my department
head that I didn't sign on to train pilot line girls and I could meet
his schedule with having to train a new pair each weak. That had an
effect. I didn't train any more and I didn't get new ones for the rest
of that 9 unit production run. By the 9th unit they did two a week.
Though they cost the project a bit more replacing the drawing's PVC wire
with Teflon insulated wire so they didn't have to worry about melting
the insulation.

The D/A converter for the 821A-1 took in frequency from the control
panel to the KHz and produced DC voltages to preset the 9 tuning servos.
It did the PA Pi-Net bandswitching, it did all that presetting. It was a
30" tall rack cabinet box filled with relays and a 19 pole 28 position
rotary switch driven by a motor. It had separate cables to each servo
and controlled to servo driver, whether a preset voltage with follow up
pot, or a discriminator of phase and screen current (for loading). At
different frequencies different capacitor stations were used for loading
and it took care of that the best I recall. I didn't design it. Its
design kept a mathematician busy for many months fitting the tuning
curves with resistor banks and stacks of reed relays for interpolation.

-- 
73, Jerry, K0CQ, Technical Advisor to the CRA
All content copyright Dr. Gerald N. Johnson, electrical engineer