c4audio4c4,

where do you source your termination plates? Those speaker ones look very interesting and I like the fact that they do not banana plugs or pins and you can just use screws.

What about the one with the headphone jacks? Are these for controlling devices e.g tvs in other rooms? We usually use cat5e for these so that we can change from IR to RS232 if needed and you can easily terminate this. Do you use 22/4?

The plate with the HDMI, coaxial and headphone jack is also interesting.

Nice looking job C4

how do you determine the time invested in terminating and testing each cable?

terminate and test one and see how long it takes!

Something is happening in my pants! Keep posting the cabinet eyecandy fellas!

the speaker plates are double gang 16 port from onQ. onQ also makes the screwdown inserts for the speaker wire. We have fit 14g into them before, but not much more. Leviton makes the stereo mini headphone jacks. So for rs232, they could be used as they are 3 wire screw down on the back (yes we have used cat 5 with them). Those thngs aint cheap though. We use 22/4 for ir to our tv's. I cant remember who makes the hdmi plate, but its cool because it has two keystone inserts. One sends direct ir to 73" mitsu, the coax is for the subwoofer in the room. We used a smaller 6 port decora for the surround speaker package in that room. Makes for a nice triple gang plate to service that whole room.

I saw someone post a plate with abunch of 5 way gold binging post. Just a word of caution (and why we dont do that). I had a customer with some really expensive b & k amps one time that insisted everything be on plates. At that time, those were the goto from niles (onsite or something like that). Low and behold, one day, the customer was mounting a tv above the wall plate and dropped his ratchet across the massive wall plate and fried all his amplifiers.

different people work at different speeds. what tollerence do you put in for termination failure and retermination. I know how fast I can make them, but what about employees? Even better hung over or depresssed employees?

They use an open rack so that they can use the Venturi effect to cool the equipment? Is it possible that there is more to it than that? Any chance you can upload some pics?

CJ

PS- thanks for the Allied Electric link. I ordered a dozen of the IEC connectors yesterday.

Not from that install as it is in a secure area and no cameras are allowed. All our techs must sign non disclosure agreements and that is only after they have passed a USG background check.

We were not allowed to send one tech out because "This individual has a continuing relationship with an individual in a foreign country not under United Sates jurisdiction." His 87 year old mother is English and lives outside London.
Never mind she worked in the British army as a stenographer with their TOP SECRET code breaker division in WW2.

Your DHS at work(?) again.

I will ask if they will allow photos of another area we have worked on.

Hungover employees get sent home. Depressed employees have to enter thru the metal detector :).

I use to work really fast and have 1-5% failure rate on a project with 1000 compression fittings. I have been keeping track on the project i am at right now. I have 600 compression fittings installed with zero failures so far. I test every cable before i put it into the rack. I sometimes skip this step when im pressed for time but i decided its not worth it because i waste so much time later when i am trying to test the system wondering if i have a bad cable.

Stamp how do you test it?

Stamp - we're in the same boat. I have built racks not testing because I am confident in my abilities. When you build a rack with 200 or 300 fittings, sometimes taking that risk is worth it. We dont use the PW tester, we just use our toners. Check tip to tip, sleeve to sleeve, and check tip to sleeve for shorts. Other than being in a time crunch we test every cable.

Like this............


Since i know the cable is coming right off the roll and i strip the cable properly and i avoid bending the center conductor im fairly confident the cable is good if it passes continuity. So far i haven't had any issues.

You better knock on some type of high quality wood Stamp!

PW is a little different though. If the ground screw gets screwed too tight, it can go through the foam and touch the center conductor.

Why? I have been making interconnects since 1992! Other than the obvious short due to installer termination error theres only been 1 instance where i had an issue that could not be resolved.

At one clients home i had an issue where the RG-59 to the subwoofers (2 different rooms) were freaking out on me making the subwoofers go nuts even when the system was off. I had a cat5 and a 14/4 pulled to each sub also so i hackstalled the 14/4 with some cheese cable ends until i got some baluns to use with the cat5's.

So as far as i am concerned... if the cable passes continuity check, its good. What are you guys using to test your interconnects with that goes beyond checking continuity? I sure as heck am not interested in running certification on each one. Its like 2 minutes per cable. I would never be able to go home :).