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Electrical engineering
Spout switches
Created by Karl Wendt.
Want to join the conversation?
- What does soldering do? Is it kind of like welding?(4 votes)
- Basically, Yes. Welding fuses metal,. Whereas, soldering melts an intermediary metal at lower temperature to join one or more parts together.(8 votes)
- do you have to use 22 awg wire can you use 16 awg wire(6 votes)
- It doesn't really matter- as long as you're careful.(4 votes)
- why do they use hot glue?(5 votes)
- Do you NEED to solder it?
can't you just twist them up(1 vote)- You can but you have to really twist them tightly or else they can just loosen over time. So it's better to solder.(8 votes)
- Atin the vid looked as if the right single pole double throw lever had "melted" 6:35
would the bot still function?(2 votes)- Hello Anmol,
It looks superficial to me. You need to solder very fast or the plastic in these switches will melt. I would expect the bot to function with no problems.
Regards,
APD(2 votes)
- how does the soder melt metal(2 votes)
- The solder is the metal. It's an alloy with a relatively low melting temperature so it can be easily melted by the hot soldering iron.(1 vote)
- how come he did not put the wire through the other holes.(2 votes)
- If the red wire and the black wire touch why would it cause problems and why does it explode?(1 vote)
- Hi Monica,
The wires connect to the positive and negative terminals of the batteries. When the wires are shorted a large current will flow causing the batteries to get hot.
The risk of explosion is low with these AA batteries but things could get hot.
Please leave a comment below if you would like to continue the conversation.
Regards,
APD(1 vote)
- Do we need to solder the wires together or could we just twist them to get the same effect?(1 vote)
- You can twist them, but they'll come apart more easily. There are videos on doing that too.(1 vote)
- Hey there- I like the video but I have a question, does it matter whether you use stranded or solid wire? I'm making the bot and using stranded the whole way. (I'm guessing not, just checking.)(0 votes)
- It does not matter, as long as you are very careful with the stranded wire parts not touching other parts. If the stranded wire gets out, I would run solder carefully through the wire to make the strands closer together.(3 votes)
Video transcript
OK. So let's go ahead and put
our single pole double throw lever switches on our bot. Now, we want to make sure that
we attach these at the ends and that we put them so
that they sort of stick off the edge. And they're at about
a 45 degree angle. Like that. We're going to take a
little bit of hot glue, put a little blob on that
corner and a little blob on that corner. And then, we'll take our
switch, and we'll set it there. We kind of want to make sure
that the hot glue does not interfere with the lever. There we go. Like that. So now what we're
going to do is we're going to put some batteries in. And this is basically just
to provide some weight to help hold the battery
holder and switches in place. Now, when you do
that, be careful. Because you don't want
these two wires to touch. If the two wires touch,
they'll short out the batteries and melt the housing and
cause problems for you. So you don't want
that to happen. So what we do want
to do now is we're going to take another wire--
this is a solid-core 22 gauge wire-- and we're going to strip
off a good bit from the end. Let's take off about
three quarters of an inch. And we'll just take that and
run it through wire strippers there. And pull that off. And then, what we're
going to do with that wire is we're going to hook
it through the two holes. You can see there's holes
in these connections here. We're going to hook it
through those two holes. And then, we're going to
connect this wire to it. So that's going to
allow us to connect two sides of our single pole
double throw switches and give us an extra wire that we can
use for lighting up our LED eyes in a little bit. So we'll take our
needle-nose, and we're going to try and bend the wire
so we can loop it through. Let's see if we
can make this work. It's kind of tricky to do. But if you can get it,
you want to run the wire through the hole in
the leg of the switch because it's going to give
you a better connection when you solder it. There we go. It just takes a
little bit of time working on it to get it in. You can see I think I
popped this-- I did. I popped this switch loose. So what I might do
is actually just peel this hot glue back up. That's OK. You want to make sure you
get all that hot glue out if that happens to you. Just peel it up out of the way. And this is actually
a good thing because it may mean
that we can connect these switches a
little bit more easily. But I'm going to put some
more hot glue down and then put the switch back in place. There we go. Again, make sure you
keep your fingers out of the way of that hot glue
because it will stick to them. And it's definitely not
fun to get it on your hand. And there we go. So now we have the switch
in and the wires connected. Like that. OK. And let's see if we can-- I want
to maneuver a little bit more and see if we can get a little
bit more of this wire through. Yeah. OK. So now we can take
our red-stranded wire. And we have a little
piece of the solid-core that we can tie onto and
solder everything together. So we're going to
cut this wire down. And then, we'll
take our strippers and strip off a little
bit of the excess. There we go. And then, we can take this
red wire and bring it up. And we just want to twist it
around that solid-core wire. OK. Like that. So now, we've got
a good connection, and we can solder that in place. So let's go ahead and do that. So we're going to take
our soldering iron. Make sure we tin
the tip, remember. A little bit of tin there. And knock off the excess. And then, I'm going to put
the soldering iron right there and try and make sure I can
get enough heat to the wire to get the solder
to hold onto it. There we go. It's good there. And there's just
one little place here where I need
to make sure I've got a pretty good connection. Here we go. Now, we need to connect
the next wire, which is going to be our white wire. All right. So in order to do
that, we're going to take a white wire here. And I'm just going to take a
little bit of the end of that off. And I think what we're
going to do-- take off about this much
of the insulation. And so we're going to run
this wire through here. Like that. We don't need the
insulation in the middle. As long as we keep the white
wire away from the black wire, we should be fine. I'm sorry. As long as we keep the white
wire away from the red wire. OK. There we go. So this now gives
me-- so we want to make sure we
keep that wire away. Like that. Now it gives me a place to
connect to for the black wire. So this is the other
side of our circuit, and we're going to
connect to that. We'll cut it right here. And then, we'll strip off
the excess insulation again. And now we're going to
connect our black wire. So now we should be
able to take our solder and solder all the
parts together. So we're going to solder the
wire and the switch right here. And then, we're going
to solder the black wire and the white wire
together right here. And then, we need to
solder the white wire to the other side,
the other switch. And so now we have
our connections. Now, we don't need a whole
lot of extra wire there. So we can trim off the excess. And it's OK to sort of
push it out of the way. Definitely don't
want your black wire that's connected to the white
one here to touch the red one. So keep those things apart. I think I'm going
to put a little bit more solder on that joint there. There we go. That way it all sort
of flows together. And again, we want to make sure
that those switches still work.