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When you assume...

Started by sigma7, January 17, 2026, 07:46:46 PM

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sigma7

#30
Quote from: mst3k on Today at 03:54:15 AMI don't see how I can figure out which whisker goes to which other whisker.

The position or order of each turn around the ferrite isn't critical. What is critical is that they all go in the same direction. As a result, I think you can reconnect the pieces in an imperfect order.

The original windings are tight around the core to minimize copper and limit the vibration that can cause fatigue and whining. Some slack in the winding repairs will be acceptable and unavoidable; they can be restrained to minimize vibration.

Since the insulating varnish doesn't have much dielectric strength, adjacent turns can't have a high voltage differential. But this yoke isn't a high voltage situation, so keeping windings in the same area together is sufficient (or so I speculate).

You'll need some materials:

Magnet wire to make short jumpers, with varnish/enamel insulation that can be removed by soldering. The diameter should match or be slightly thicker than the original winding wire. You don't need much, so salvaging it from a dead transformer or the like might be appropriate.

A low viscosity liquid insulating varnish/enamel to apply to your connections. Potential insulators are MG Chemicals 4228A-55ML, UV curing solder mask, thinned nail polish. If it looks like there is a sufficient gap between these coils and the tube when the yoke is in place, then a thicker insulation could work. If you're not confident about success, a simple tiny fold of tape could be sufficient to test the repair (even if the yoke won't fit all the way onto the tube), and once success is in sight, could be replaced with the liquid option.

A timer to limit the amount of time at each sitting, depending on your familiarity with tedious detailed tasks, say 30 minutes to start. It will be easy to get consumed in the details, and not realize that fatigue is rising, increasing the chance of a critical mistake.

I would approach it like this:

First 'strip' about 3mm or 1/8" of varnish from the end of each whisker. This is done with heat, eg. in this case a blob of solder on a soldering iron. The varnish will burn away, leaving tinned copper wire. Practice with some scrap magnet wire before doing it on the yoke under repair.

Since dropping a blob of solder into the yoke windings will remove insulation and short turns together and make repair impossible, diligently protect the rest of the wire with paper or low-tack tape, and try to orient things so solder drops will fall through. Re-check that the protection is intact every time you are preparing to bring the soldering iron near the yoke.

If you have something suitable at hand (most people wouldn't), you might also wrap some kind of thin thermal insulation around the hot parts of the soldering iron that might bump the yoke, making only the very tip dangerous. The insulation would need to withstand up to 800 F or 425 C degrees. A piece of silicone tubing might work.

Now that all the free ends are tinned:

Start at one pin of the connector and use an ohmmeter to find the one whisker that connects to it. When you find it, use fine tweezers to turn a tiny hook in the tinned end.

Then check all of the other tinned ends to ensure there are no others that are connected to that circuit. If you find any, then there is still a short between windings that you need to find and correct. (This assumes the yoke is not bifilar wound, which I don't know for sure.)

Having confirmed there is only one tinned end connected to the connector, choose a likely partner from the whiskers that are proximate enough that they could have been the other side of the original break. The selected wire must be continuing in the same direction around the winding, and nearby, but doesn't need to be the original connection. Again put a tiny hook in the tinned end.

Cut a short piece of magnet wire that will be long enough to join the hooks together. Tin the ends and make hooks in the tinned part. Add this jumper between the hooks in the yoke, close the hooks tight, and touch with the soldering iron to connect them. If you must add solder, use as little as possible as any lump will make things tighter when reassembling.

If there is enough room to work, leave the connection uninsulated so that you can easily check or change connections later. If there isn't room, insulate the tinned parts of the now re-connected wire, and dress the wire out of the way. You may want to make some jumpers a bit longer so that the bumps created by the connections can be dressed to places where there is more room for them.

Repeat until all the whiskers are connected, at which point measuring between the two pins at the connector should show a low resistance again.

Dress the wires, reassemble on the CRT gently, and test.

If the test is a success, but the yoke is noisy (whines), you may want to remove the yoke and tack any slack wires in place.

There are a lot of untested suggestions there, so may end up adding/changing as I think of more details...

If you decide to attempt it, good luck!
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