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[Bill Coleman AA4LR]

On 7/21/00 11:56 AM, charles w. morehouse at cwmorehouse at worldnet.att.net
wrote:

>Have had success at rebuilding switch wafers. First find a similar
>switch that you can harvest contacts from. Remove the bad parts from
>your original. Rivets are available from Keystone. Mouser has them. Or
>you can use 2-56 or smaller screws to reattach them. I like the machine
>screws. See your local hobby store.


I repaired a Heath four-position antenna switch this way. (What is it? A
HW-1234 or something?)

Switch wafer was fine, but the contact for one position was completely
melted away, along with some char marks around the switch. Either
lighning had fried the contact, or more likely someone had tried to
hot-switch the antenna while a full gallon amplifier was sending through
it. Zap!

Since this switch has a ceramic wafer, I found a broken piece of wafer in
my junk box, and carefully drilled out the contact. then I VERY carefully
drilled out the rivet holding the melted switch contact. Some WD-40 and
elbow grease removed 90% of the char marks.

I put the new contact in place, held with a tiny (2-56) screw from my
junk box. Be careful when tightening the screw, as you don't want to
break the switch wafer.

I read about this trick 20+ years ago in a Hint and Kink book. Neat to
actually use it successfully.




Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at radio.org
Quote: "Boot, you transistorized tormentor! Boot!"
            -- Archibald Asparagus, VeggieTales

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