[aprssig] Making molded connectors and potting

[Earl Needham]

At 12:48 PM 5/23/2005, Keith Kotch wrote:
>In my line of work, one of our customers is a major avionics manufacturer 
>for whom I do some environmental monitoring in their production 
>facilities.  One of the rooms that I check is where they pot electronics 
>and crt displays.  I always like to see these processes and it spurs me to 
>think how nice I could make projects look and last if I adopted such 
>concepts as potting and creating molded connectors.
>
>In asking around it was suggested that I look in Arts and Crafts stores 
>for molding supplies.  I did run across this company at a local 
>store:  <http://www.smooth-on.com/>http://www.smooth-on.com/
>
>Looking at some disc samples of the different molding compounds makes this 
>stuff look promising.  I don't know about dielectric properties of the 
>material but since it's rubber-like or plastic-like in some forms I don't 
>think that would be a problem.

         I used to work on airplanes in the Air Force.  If anyone is 
interested, I'll try to find out who made the potting compound we used and 
forward that info to the list.

         As for molding the stuff -- when times were hard, we'd just use 
masking tape to create a "dam" around the back of the cannon plug and fill 
up the resultant cavity with potting compound.

         Be aware that, some years ago, there was a product that reverted 
back to liquid in certain conditions, and grounded a LOT of F-4's!

         7 3
         Earl


Earl Needham, KD5XB, Clovis, New Mexico DM84jk
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