GPZ 10" Xcoils In USA

[Andyy]

10 hours ago, phrunt said:

Where did you get this photo from Norvic?  It looks a risky solder job there to me and obviously it's out in the field so it was never glued/liquid taped.  Also the adapters normally come with a little plastic tube to slide up and cover the wires to stop them shorting on the metal outside of the adapter, this isn't on this adapter .

Yeah, I made sure to tin the wires before and put flux on all connections.  When you do this it will help prevent cold solder joints, remove oxides, and makes the solder job much cleaner as the solder kinda pulls everything into position.

Also, I put flux in the cups and dropped in a short piece of solder wire.  After doing this for each of the 5 positions, I went back and heated it to get a nice bead in each cup.  If you do this, first, the tinned wire will drop in the puddle cleanly when you reheat the cup. 

As for doing the RX wire last, that is definitely a good tip.  I started at pin 5 so I knew for sure where I was at and then worked around back to pin 1.   So for my cable the RX shield and RX signal were done last.  That was just dumb luck on my part.

And getting to stretching the coil, I tried this over and over as well.  It did not work.  If it did, I would expect the manufacturer to add this to his step in the manufacturing, before shipping.  If not monitored, this could definitely cause people to damage their patch cables. 

[Jonathan Porter]

It would pay to regularly check the adapter for connectivity to avoid bricking your machine with continuous shortening and lengthening of the GPZ shaft which then puts huge pressure on the fragile connector joints.

I suggested to the Russian he just make a straight cable instead and have it protrude out the bottom shaft when collapsed to avoid this issue. It looks like he is sheathing the leads in heat shrink then wrapping the coil lead around a rod of some kind then heating up with a hot air gun to get the lead to conform to the curly shape, this must add a huge amount of weight to the coil. Even though he has a curly cable it is way stiffer than the Minelab one so does not soak up tension anywhere near as much, this problem is even worse in cold weather.

JP

 

[jasong]

If the patch could be done so that it's connected in the lower shaft or lower part of the middle shaft (basically, a very long patch cable) that would avoid this issue too, and make changing coils in general really quick. The chipped connector would always stay connected and no opening of the control box would be necessary, nor would threading cable through the shaft as the same curly cable could just always stay in the middle shaft. As long as the connector protruded out a centimeter or so you could just grab it and pull it down slightly to make the connection and off you go. Same with the cable coming out of the coil/lower shaft.

I'm curious if the manufacturer has tried that yet, or if it's not possible because it vibrates/moves around too much if the patch isn't in the control box? If so, maybe just make a simple plastic centralizer/stabilizer to hold it put.

*not to mention it would give a person a heck of a lot more wire to use for instances like breaks. If mine breaks again I'm not sure I can fix it. I'll have to operate and splice some more wire in, but it's within a shielded cable so that isn't easy and space is almost gone to peel insulation back further. Also, I think the tiny wires had foil wrapped around them, so exposing that much of the RX without the foil I'm guessing is going to eventually introduce noise from radiation from the other wires within the connector, but that's just a guess.

[Jonathan Porter]

The Coil would see the connector which would kill depth and sensitivity. 

[jasong]

Ahh, good point. Again slapping my forehead with a duh.

[Norvic]

Jasong, how did you go replacing the cotton around the cable that you had to splice off to make the connection, I would think that combined with the hot glue would disallow any movement in the connector.

[Jin]

30 minutes ago, jasong said:

If the patch could be done so that it's connected in the lower shaft or lower part of the middle shaft (basically, a very long patch cable) that would avoid this issue too, and make changing coils in general really quick. The chipped connector would always stay connected and no opening of the control box would be necessary, nor would threading cable through the shaft as the same curly cable could just always stay in the middle shaft. As long as the connector protruded out a centimeter or so you could just grab it and pull it down slightly to make the connection and off you go. Same with the cable coming out of the coil/lower shaft.

I'm curious if the manufacturer has tried that yet, or if it's not possible because it vibrates/moves around too much if the patch isn't in the control box? If so, maybe just make a simple plastic centralizer/stabilizer to hold it put.

*not to mention it would give a person a heck of a lot more wire to use for instances like breaks. If mine breaks again I'm not sure I can fix it. I'll have to operate and splice some more wire in, but it's within a shielded cable so that isn't easy and space is almost gone to peel insulation back further. Also, I think the tiny wires had foil wrapped around them, so exposing that much of the RX without the foil I'm guessing is going to eventually introduce noise from radiation from the other wires within the connector, but that's just a guess.

I cant remember if this has been covered before but why cant we just fit the chip on the inside of the gpz's case before the plug? Then change the gpz plug over to a gpx plug (cant buy the gpz plug apparently as Minelab have them specially made)  

I too have been thinking that with constant changing of coils it could be only a matter of time that a wire breaks and shorts things out. I guess that answers the question why the Russian guy suggests using glue to try and make the plug fitting as solid as possible like a factory plug.

[Andyy]

25 minutes ago, Jin said:

I cant remember if this has been covered before but why cant we just fit the chip on the inside of the gpz's case before the plug? Then change the gpz plug over to a gpx plug (cant buy the gpz plug apparently as Minelab have them specially made)  

I too have been thinking that with constant changing of coils it could be only a matter of time that a wire breaks and shorts things out. I guess that answers the question why the Russian guy suggests using glue to try and make the plug fitting as solid as possible like a factory plug.

I think that if you open the case, you void the warranty.  You don't necessarily do that if you use the 19" coil to create your patch cord.

3 hours ago, Andyy said:

  If not monitored, this could definitely cause people to damage their patch cables. 

After further thought, I believe I made an inaccurate statement earlier.  The glue or any other potting compound does a good job at holding it tight and distributing tensile forces throughout the connector.  I would double check the strain relief clamp on your connectors.  That needs to be tight so that you won't get any pull on the pins.  Really crank these down. I should have mentioned this earlier.  When built properly, even a tight coil should not pull out pins.  That is why these strain reliefs are put in place.  

If your strain relief (connector clamp) was tight, then the second most likely point at which damage can occur is when the soldered assembly gets crammed through the connector tube.  It is tight.  And there is no real way to check for an open circuit.  All you can check for are shorts/continuity to other pins .. which you hope and pray you don't get after getting it all together.

 

[jasong]

53 minutes ago, Norvic said:

Jasong, how did you go replacing the cotton around the cable that you had to splice off to make the connection, I would think that combined with the hot glue would disallow any movement in the connector.

Followed the instructions, wrapped cotton thread around the bundle, as described. That doesn't provide any longitudinal strain relief though as does the original thread in the ML cable. 

27 minutes ago, Andyy said:

I would double check the strain relief clamp on your connectors. 

I did when I built it, they were screwed down as tight as I could get them to go, to the point I thought the screw would strip any tighter the clamp was fully in contact with the other side of the clamp and the screws would not tighten further. 

However, I bet I know what might have happened in my case. I just took the calipers and measured the ID of the clamp and the OD of the ML wire. They are both roughly 6.6mm. There are some jaws set further back in the clamp that decreased the effective ID, but I wonder how close they are to the cut line of the rubber? I really don't want to cut this patch open again to check since it's working, but it could be they didn't quite clamp on far enough the first time, or were so close to the edge it sort of bent the rubber down instead of clamping onto it. Or maybe I cut the rubber a mm too far, or who knows what else could contribute to it moving slightly.

All it would take is just a tiny fraction of a mm of movement to put strain on that RX signal wire, especially since it's pretty difficult to get the hot glue to match the inner dimensions of the connector exactly without injecting it in and just molding by hand and cutting with a knife and guessing it's close.

If I made another one I'd make that RX wire just a tiny bit longer than the others so the beefier wires take the strain if that happens.

[Andyy]

16 minutes ago, jasong said:

 However, I bet I know what might have happened in my case. I just took the calipers and measured the ID of the clamp and the OD of the ML wire. They are both roughly 6.6mm. There are some jaws set further back in the clamp that decreased the effective ID, but I wonder how close they are to the cut line of the rubber? I really don't want to cut this patch open again to check since it's working, but it could be they didn't quite clamp on far enough the first time, or were so close to the edge it sort of bent the rubber down instead of clamping onto it. Or maybe I cut the rubber a mm too far, or who knows what else could contribute to it moving slightly.

 

No, I wouldn't touch it anymore.  My folded back signal wire made it very snug for my case, as I probably used too low of gauge wire but I got it to work.  You can add a piece of rubber under the clamp if you think there is too much room. 

But I just wanted to bring it to people's attention that are building the connector themselves.  The final clamp has a very important strain relief purpose.  This is not covered in the detailed instructions, but it should be.  This has got to be tight.