Electrical Tape = Cheap Quick Discos?

[PacManess]

Ok, I have an idea...tell me if this would work or if this would be a really really bad idea.
Instead of crimping quick discos to wires and connecting them directly onto the switches, what if I stripped about an inch of wire, wrapped it around the switch, and then used electrical tape to bind it all together? Would this work? Or is it a lazy man's impossible dream?

Speaking of dreams, I had one the other night where I was watching Animal House, and at the end of movie, Belushi's character moved to Japan and was on a game show where the contestants would be in these see thru plexiglass booths that had air holes in them. Then, a fat guy with a HUGE hand would push a meat thru the air holes into the mouth of the person inside. And, if that person could guess what it was, they'd get points. If not, they'd have to eat their own body weight in it.
Anyway, Belushi won the game, and the other guy had to commit Hari Kari (for the dishonor of losing). When he fell on his sword a fountain of blood spewed forth, more than Johnny Depp's Nightmare on Elm Street Death. Good times.
Ok, anyway, yeah.
Any ideas?

[Snarbald]

Sounds like more work than the quick disconnects to me?

[TalkingOctopus]

It would probably work OK.  However, eventually they may get loose, giving you a bad connection.  QD's are really easy to apply.  I'd get some and do your wiring the right way.

[mahuti]

Well, it's a tossup between tape and diconnects, but I think the disconects would be easier as well. ANd they will DEFINITELY be easier to fix, adjust. When one of your connectons comes undone under the tape, it will be much more difficult to identifity the problem causing connection. You also won't be able to switch buttons as easily. (In my case, I swapped some button connections for a Joystick)

[PacManess]

Well, the problem I had with QDs are this...

1) They didnt' always stay. I'd make what I thought was a good crimp, but then the wire would still slip out. Might just be that I was using a crimper bought at the "Everything is a Dollar Store". I might try buying a better crimper and giving it another go.

2) The QDs didn't always fit my switches. It was like I had two different size of switches. My leaf switches and my cherry microswitches and my other microswitches were all different. Kooky eh?


But yeah, I think you are right. Might as well do it the right way.

[NoOne=NBA=]

The problem with the tape method is that it will probably oxidize over time, or the adhesive from the tape may work it's way in between the wire and switch.
It will work, if you want to go that route, but be prepared for possible problems down the road.

I personally solder all my connectors because it offers a much more secure connection.
It's either THERE, or it's NOT THERE.
The few fixes I've had to do (3 in a year) have all been from accidentally yanking one of the wires off while swapping panels.
(I've never gotten around to cleaning up/protecting my wiring--it just hangs off the switches on the back).
I'm also using 28 gauge for all my wiring; so I would expect that the results would probably be even better if I used "real" wire (22ga. or larger).

[Sylentwulf]

Electrical tape is gooey. You have to reeally stretch it tight over an exact small area, whie holding the pieces together. I imagine 2 people doing it, MAY work out OK. But things heat up and cool down, and eventually that tape IS going to fall off guaranteed.

At least with the QD's if you have a bad crimp it will fall off quickly, or most likely never. Buy a bag of 100 and practice on 10-20 of them until you get your crimping down perfect. Give the wire a good yank and see if it comes loose.

Also, I crimp the connection terminals themselves so the fit on REAL tight.

[slicer_d]

I guess the tape would work if you wanted a temp job to take apart later but you might as well do it right the first time for the cp.

I dont understand the problem with the QD's I bought some ones a Home Depot and the holes were way to big for my wires so I would have to mash the heck out of them with the crimpper but out of like 20-30 I only had one failed crimp.  I also have the really cheap crimpper/wire cutters they dont even work as wire cutters because the two sides dont meet up right but the crimmping part works just fine.

[Sephroth57]

well apparently the size of QD for arcade machines is .187 and this is a weird size not usually found in stores. Peale sells them cheap like 6$ for 100 check out the buy/sell forum

[Stingray]

The tape idea sounds like much more work to me, and will make for a very sloppy wiring job.

If your QDs are falling off, try doubling over the wire before you crimp. You can use the larger sized blue QDs on arcade controls, you just have to give the connection end a little squeeze with the pliers before you connect them.

-S

[eightbit]

All this could be resolved if you used a decent crimper and the right size disconnects for the wire and terminal. Following are generalizations and YMMV.

There are 2 common sizes on the connection end. The wider ones are .25 and are used on most microswitch buttons.  This is a very common automotive size and can be found just about anywhere. The other ones are .187 and are slightly narrower. These are used on a lot of joysticks. There are also 2 sizes commonly used for the crimp end for different size wire. The 2 sizes are red and blue, the blue are for 14-16 guage wire and the red for 16-22 guage wire.

Useing the proper QD and a decent crimper there is no reason why your wire should ever pull out or the QD fall of from or not fit your switch. If your using a smaller guage wire, like cat5 or phone wire or something, try stripping extra off the end and folding it over so that there is more to crimp onto. If your daisy chaining your grounds and want to crimp 2 wires into the same QD you may have to use the next size QD up to fit both wires depending on the size of your wire.

Peale sells at least one size over in the buy/sell forum and http://www.groovygamegear.com sells all 4 of these sizes for a good price.