Nasa technical standard (how to solder)

[kagliostro]

May be you know this

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/NS87393.pdf

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/canceled/NS87393-Ch5.pdf

how to solder turrets

Kagliostro

[LooseChange]

What a waste of tax payers money... 93 pages on how to solder a turret!!!

[supro66]

What a waste of tax payers money... 93 pages on how to solder a turret!!!

I agree

I like the page that says

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Working at Westinghouse and Boeing I see these every day

Look at how many people had to look at it before it became law

You should see the pages here at BOEING [ HOW TO TORQUE A BOLT ]

I remember us taxpayers paying for
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE KETCHUP TO COME OUT OF THE BOTTLE

http://joanharvest.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/how-fast-does-your-ketchup-flow/

[sluckey]

Actually that's a very good manual. And when combined with a two week 'hands on' instructor led course, it's even more valuable. There are applications that demand high quality joints. I've never seen anyone that's been thru that course that didn't have excellent soldering skills that they could even apply to simple tube amps. But not many will invest in the proper tools to produce a NASA certified solder joint.The government does produce some wordy documents, but there really is a lot of meat in that one. It's aimed to depot level work but has field applications also.

[G._Hoffman]

What a waste of tax payers money... 93 pages on how to solder a turret!!!

Has anyone's life ever depended on your solder joints holding up under 7 G's of acceleration?  No?  Then maybe your standards of what is acceptable are a bit different from those of the aerospace industry.  And remember, the Apollo 1 disaster was partially attributable to sloppy workmanship.  Mind you, it was also bad design, bad procedures, bad inspection work, and bad maintenance work, but if that wire had been harnessed properly it wouldn't have been damaged by the opening and closing for the inspection hatch, and no spark would have ignited the Velcro (which was too close) in the 100% oxygen (30 PSI) environment, making the inward opening hatch a non-issue.  NASA has very, VERY good reasons to sweat the details.

And given how much furor their is anytime an astronaut dies - though, if they had died in an experimental airplane no one but their friends and family would care - the attention to detail is politically expedient, too.


Gabriel

[jjasilli]

I thought it was helpful & informative.  I never had anyone to show me how to do this stuff.

[PRR]

NASA didn't write all that stuff on bare paper.

Military electronics, Bell Telephone System, and computer systems had billions of joints and high downtime costs. You can readily find mil-spec papers. I have seen mainframe computer soldering requirements. Mostly the Bell system moved away from solder joints, but they still had millions of them, and Bell was rich with Standards And Practices manuals.

NASA studied existing solder docs, added their special vacuum problems (shock/vibration was already covered in Jeep radio, and steady high Gee that won't smoosh the astronauts won't break Jeep-worthy wiring), and made it consistent. So any sub-contractor could hire any out-of-work amp-tech, have them train to the NASA standards, and it would be good.

[simonallaway]

The turret specific stuff starts on page 53 (Section 9). I thought it was very interesting.

9.2.3  Continuous Run Wrapping.  If three or more terminals in a row are to be connected, a
solid bus wire jumper may be continued from terminal to terminal as shown in Figure 9-4

Their procedure isn't as pretty looking as Dougs

[simonallaway]

... and the section on high voltage terminations (10.3 page 62) is interesting too. The diagram implies they want a somewhat enormous blob of solder to completely encompass the terminal and wires. What's their version of high voltage?

[sluckey]

I like the page that says

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I see that a lot with technical manuals. There really is a purpose for those blank pages. Makes two sided printing easy.

[EW57]

Good stuff!  I enjoy a well written tech manual, especially after having to use poorly translated (and written) documentation on italian machines with french controllers. Sometimes things dont translate well!