I was an Electronics technician back in the 70's and spent many hours wire wrapping, I think I still have a battery operated wire wrapping tool. Keep up the great videos!

Like they say -- "if I had a penny for every ...". I can't begin to count the number of wire-wraps I did in my 15 years with IBM. The weekends were for engineering changes and we would rip-and-tear to get everything working by Monday. Thanks for the memories!

I can't believe I didn't know about this, I have wrapping wire and all of a sudden I think I am going to be using it a lot more. Thanks for the hint!

Don’t forget the modified wrap tools. They would wrap 1-2 turns of insulated wire around the pin before wrapping the conductor. This provided a much sturdier connection as it better supported the connecting wire. Very important if there were physical shocks or vibration.

Multiple thumbs up, for finding the arpanet map of 1977 (very cool) and mentioning my hero Bil Herd. Been using wire wrap since mid 1980s. I have the same wrap tool but mine is gold color.

What an amazing discovery! Literally saves a lot of time and creates new opportunities. Thank you for bringing it up, Andreas!

Thanks for keeping these old-school techniques alive, it never hurts to have numerous options. And there's a kind of spooky artistic-ness to it, it just looks cool on the bigger boards with more wiring. Great vid as usual!

Wire wrapping was used on the Apollo Mission computers. Highly reliable.

FYI, wire wrapping goes back to at least the early 50's if not even farther back. Wire wrapping as a technique has been used since the late 1800's, although the first device specifically built to the standards we now think of as "wire wrapping" was not introduced until 1953. I VERY much applaud you making this video, as virtually all young engineers I know are totally unaware of the technology and are generally blown away to find out how it can "outperform" solder in specific applications (thus the use in Apollo et al). You just made the world a slightly better place. :)

Wow - I was a DEC field service guy (that's #48818 to you) and maintained some of that node at ARPA - I can vouch for the compliment of machines there, the modem (PDP-11/40 + a rack of BB&N modem stuff) and the main work machine - the PDP-15, were "mine". Back in the day I bought a ton of pre-cut and stripped WW wire, tried out all the tools, wound up mostly using a hand tool (like pictured here), as the manual and C battery guns had "issues. Still have that stuff - I didn't wind up building as many Kaypro/Xerox-820 clones as I'd planned. I'd point out a couple of things - one is that you can hold your long-pinned breakout board into the perfboard with a WW connection, so you don't need solder to hold it on (at least loosely). Second, it pays to put the wires you're most sure of on first, as multilayer wire wraps can get into some real interesting comedy of unwrapping to change one that's under two others...which are under ... and so on. You really do not want to try and reuse a wire-end as said here - the nicks you put in it using it the first time will give trouble later. It maybe should have been mentioned that there needs to be a little insulation involved, so at least part of the first turn (the rules used to say at least one whole turn) is insulated wire. That way a little spring-back won't make for shorts later on.

Thanks for bringing this forgotten technique for wiring circuits together without the need of soldering!!!!! I’m impressed with how well it works with detaching wires almost as much as I was immediately blown away by just how effective it was at connecting them in the first place!!!!

Hi Andreas, glad my tip made into your well organised video overview, congrats! I enjoyed the benefits of wire wrap in many projects and I am happy that it gets a broader attention! Thanks for showing my name in your video detail, as as I said: the technology is old, but fortunately the wires do not know about that....

I love this video! I discovered wire wrapping a few years ago when I started working on vintage 1970's stereo amplifiers. I even bought a wire wrapping tool. Recently I started building a project with a microcontroller and several boards and it occurred to me why not use wire wrapping instead of Dupont connectors or soldering wires directly to the boards, or spending money on fancy connectors. Apparently it wasn't a crazy idea!

The old is new again! I did wire wrapping for many projects in the 70s. Very easy and reliable. I still use my gold tool today. Great to see you introducing the technology to new users. Great video as usual.

Wow, this is really cool! Yesterday I was completing my project, although I love programming and electronics, I found out that my shaky hands are not compatible with soldering. This is really cool way to connect stuff. Thanks for this video!

Glad to see that I’m not the only one still using wire wrap for projects. Just bought a new ok tool - lost the old one I built my altair clone with. I like the built in stripper also, you should wrap clockwise 6-8 turns. The dupont connectors are great for breadboarding and I use them a lot. However, if you want a reliable prototype or 1 off part, wirewrap is much better.

Well this takes me back! I thought I was the only one here to still have WW equipment. I always use the stripper in the middle of the tool and if you're planning on buying a hand WW tool make sure it does the "modified wrap". This puts a turn of insulated wire around the post first and prevents wire breaking at this critical point. For components such as resistors and capacitors I use single sided WW pins which have a notch on the upper side to solder the component wire to. I have built Z80, 6809 and 68HC11 boards in the dim distant past using this technique. I remember being at Plessey in the early 1980's when computerised WW was introduced for wiring backplanes; it reduced the time per board from almost a full day to just 20 minutes each! Bob

I Andreas! Love your channel and watch it all the time! I used to use wrapping for all my projects back in the 80's. My largest project had over 6000 wire wrap connections for a stage lighting controller. It still works today.

In 1963, I was a 'Youth in Training' GPO telephone engineer and was sent to West Byfleet Telephone Exchange in Surrey, UK, to do some wire-wrapping at their new exchange. I think I used an electrically driven gun. I later moved on to be a computer mainframe engineer and worked on the CDC 6600 at London University, which appears on the bottom right of the Arpanet Logical map, March 1977, shown at 1:41 in your video. Thanks for sharing that and bringing back so many memories. I must get a wire-wrapping tool and give it a go again.

YAS! I just got my tool and wire and it is working great, just as you said it would. Very impressed. Thank you Andreas!

You brought me back to my internship in the 80's. Thank you. I still have these tools and they're excellent. I also recommend. Reliable computers like PDP I have worked with were wired wrapped. Memories...

Riesigen Dank, dass Du mich über das Video auf diese Technik gebracht hast. Ich bin Hobbyist und habe oft bei Prototypen irgendwelche Fehler drin gehabt, die sich bereits gelötet schlecht reparieren ließen. Beim Wire Wrapping kann man wunderbar nachbessern.

Thanks for this, I did not know it was still possible to buy the tool and wire to do this. I just purchased what you demonstrated, it arrived today, and works great. Thanks again for all your great videos, with so much useful information.

Fascinating stuff! Recently bought that same multi-colored wire for a small project and somehow ended up watching this video 😊

Well done! Really well explained and superb video skills, thank you from Canada!

Excellent, thanks very much. Whenever I search for some learning stuff I‘m running over your videos. So I guess it‘s time for a subscription.

Glad to see this video. This is exactly how all our prototype and small quantity boards were made. We also added conformal coat to secure and isolate the pin side of a board. If coated and in need of modification, you have to use a solvent to remove the coat. I'm not a fan of Dupont wires because it is too easy for them to become loose and of course the 1 to 1 issue but everything has its uses.

Very interesting! I wasn't alive in the 70s (and I was a child in the 80s) so I didn't know about this technique. Thanks for showing it!

This is something i want to try someday in future because i am too young to remember use of this. Thanks for links.

I've decided to start wire wrapping for quick painless prototyping. They make long headers so why not. Thanks Andreas, yours was first video in my search

Huh! interesting old tech! while depopulating older electronics, i was always impressed about the manufacture abilities, to wrap tiny wires around a pin so well! now i know how it was done! Thank you for showing us.

Great video. I've been wire wrapping my prototypes since the seventies. It is much more convenient than etching pubs and the project is testable quickly.

The tool and the wire wrap wire has been laying in my workshop for year, newer tried it. This video was great, I now know how to use it :) Thanks!

Congratulations on 100K+ subscribers, Well done Andreas

Wonderful video reminding me of good times doing EE lab projects at university. We were even given electric wire wrapping machine. And hours spend troubleshooting mistakes in sticking to the wiring lists...

Excellent idea! The proliferation of row headers means that wire wrapping is again convenient and useful.

Brings back memories... like others who have commented, I too still have my wire wrap tools (battery operated and manual) bought from RS back in the early 90s. One point to note (not sure if this was mentioned by someone else) but you don’t really need a separate stripping tool as that is already built into the handle (see small hole and black metal plate with a slot). I found this perfectly adequate for prototyping but perhaps not so good for large boards with many hundreds of connections, but then you would use the electric tool anyway. I had a preference to use blue wire for data lines, green for address lines, red for Vcc, black for Gnd.

Andreas I want to thank you for sharing your research and knowledge!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!!

I realize this is an older video, but this just now popped up in my suggestions list. Funny, I made literally tens of thousands of wire wrap connections in my days. And yes, I did have a manual wire wrap tool. But we mostly used hand held power wire wrap guns. Amazing how fast you can wire up even a difficult circuit. But than I also used through hole and even surface mount PC boards as well. Thumbs Up!

I remember reading about this in Forrest Mims III's Getting Started in Electronics book when I was 12. I'm now 36 and I have just purchased my first spool of wire, a tool, and a bunch of sockets both breakoff and solid 2.54mm arduino types. I am gonna have so much rapid-prototyping fun with this stuff. :)

I learned wire wrapping many years ago. I still find it very useful.

Such a simple and clean system! Cheers.

You had me at two wires on one pin. Another great video - thanks!

Wonderful tool. it save lots of time. Thank you for recording the video.

Hammer! Wieso sehe ich das erst jetzt? Habe gerade letzte Woche erst dutzende kleine Kabel verlötet... Das hätte mir einen Haufen Arbeit gespart... Wie auch immer, habe soeben bestellt - vielen Dank für den genialen Tip!!

My wire wrapping tool arrived today and I have to say, beats duponts anyday. I love this technic and you can really makes things look organised. Well worth the time to invest in

I use wire wrap at my day job to build automated test equipment for pcb and electronics testing. It's perfect for all one off jobs and for what i do way better than soldering. Learned it fom my old college (and mentor). Thumb up for the technique and this great video ;)

This remembers my olden days during the '90s where I was involved in the wrapping for the Thompson telephone exchange back panel with mains operated wrapping gun. - Thanks, Andreas Spiess.

Fantastic -- it works really well. Thanks for the tip!

I didn't know this technique. Thanks for sharing !

Wow, it’s so cool that the OK Industries Wire-Wrap tool (that you linked) appears to be unchanged from the one I bought in the 70’s. :) I built several of my first 6800 & 6809 based micro systems completely wire-wrapped with an OK JW-1 "Just Wrap” tool (which I still have). The JW-1 tool was really fast, as no wire stripping required. The post corners cut through the kynar insulation while wrapping, for reliable connection. It was awesome making really dense DIP based designs on Eurocard square pad boards, with DIN 41612 connectors to a rack mounted Vero backplane.

The accent made the tutorial 10 time better. Thanks Andreas!

I bought a wire wrapping tool back in the 70's when I first wanted to get started in electronics. However, I never knew what in the world I was supposed to do with it. I also bought some 555 timer chips and had no idea what to do with those either. Sadly I lost interest before I ever figured out what to do with either of them. Well I have finally come back to electronics again. I have lost to many brain cells to ever be any good at it, but at least (thanks to you) I now know what that crazy looking tool is/was supposed to do. Thanks!

excellent. I love that in more and more industries, going back to old technology and even old ways (growing your own e coli free lettuce, preserving food, wire wrapping etc.) are in many cases low tech but superior.

1:40 THAT is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Cheers! Chris.

We had to do wire wrapping at Electronic school. I was wondering what that tool was in my tool box. Thanks Andreas. Have a great day.

I've never done wire wrapping myself, but i've understood being told that it only works (reliably) on square pins, since you get that gas-tight connections when the corners cut into the wire, whereas you don't get this on round pins/legs.

Nice video. I still have my wire wrapping tool I bought from Radio Shack when I was a teenager about 30 years ago. It still gets used today. Also do not restrict yourself to just 30 gauge wire. If the wire fits it in the tool you can wrap it. I use it quite often to make small wire harnesses. For a more permanent connection I will solder the wire and add a bit of hot melt glue for strain relief.

Thanks for sharing this old, but exelent technology😀👍

Wow, this is incredible!

Nice Tutorial... Something new for me... Hats off to my KZfaq guru...God Bless You...Namaste from India.

wow this is so neat!, thanks, gonna buy the tools!

Very informative. Thank you. I might order one wrapper.

I am absolutely going to try this out.

Wow i cant imagine how much time that took. Just amazing

I still have a Z80 system I made this way - wire wrap was my go to method for prototyping. But a sea of blue wires could be a problem when debugging so thanks for the tip of using coloured wires. I will now track down my old WW tool...

Thank you for this video , you indeed reminded me on old times :P

Thank you VERY MUCH for this idea! Never heard of this before. My wire wrapping tool just arrived on friday :-) Found out, you can use the thin wire of the cheap metal film resistors for wire wrapping. Greets from Basel from another guy with a swiss accent ;)

I also like wire wrap for any experimental work - in the time it takes to find and heat up an iron, I've already connected the board :)

I had no idea that's what 'wire wrapping wire' ment on AliExpress. I assumed it was for making transformers or motor coils. Getting some to try it out. Thank you!

Over 100000 subscribers, congratulations!

I still use wire wrapping today for digital logic circuit prototyping! I have an automatic wire wrapping gun and wire strippers specifically for wire wrap wire which cuts and strips the correct length of insulation. Made quite a few one off production units for customers back in the 80's just using EUROCARD size wire wrap boards!

Thanks for you video. I though those tools where not available for years anymore. I am going to order on right now.

In my high school, the teachers (and students) use wirewrapping for connecting components in the projects that seniors do. Has been this way for a very long time :)

Great vid Andreas..thanks!.. i never knew it was so easy to wire wrap, i always thought it would be a tedious job..but it looks easy with the right tool!.. id like to see a vid on soldering techniques for them dev/perf boards... i always seem to bridge connections i dont want bridged and spend too long trying to get rid of the excess

I worked for the the Italian division of the German Industrial automation company Hartman& Braun for 13 years, for several years from 1987 I worked on the Contronic 3 automation system for power stations, a project could be formed by about 50 two meter tall cabinets filled with eurocard size electronic cards all wire wrapped on the back plane, I was in the testing department, and had quite a job correcting wiring and simulating operations. Luckily we got two computer controlled machines that were capable together with an operator to reduce a two week cabling job on a cabinet to two days, with near zero mistakes reducing drastically my time for checking. Today we use DCS and 99% of the wireing has been substituted with SW.

Very reliable. I used it around 1980 to build a 8 kByte memory expansion board for my Commodore PET 2001. I designed it myself and it still worked when I last tried it 3 years ago. The base was a Eurocard(?). All IC's went in wirewrapping DIL sockets. The only soldering was for a connector, the IC power pins and the decoupling capacitors for all the ICs.

With the re-growing community of electronic hobby-enthusiasts, this wire wrapping technology along with the "Fädeltechnik" using wiring pencils, these almost forgotten techs do experience a sort of a revival. WhenI was 14 (long time ago) I had built a wiring pencil from a full metal emptied ballpen core/refill (remove color and ball, clean it). The sharp ring at the tip is great for cutting the wire after soldering, by just pressing it to the lead. I still use it and can prototype quite fast with it. You can go from pin to pin with it. Turn at least one wrap around, then go to the next... Signal per Signal can be completed by this in a fast manner. A tiny holding contraption to fixate the wire while wrapping around a pin was quickly set up, also the holder for the tiny wire coil at the end of the pen.

Awesome. Gonna have to try it out :)

Very interesting tool WSU. I Will bay one now. Thanks.

I wire wraped a PDP-8 to change current circuit communication to voltage level RS 232. PDP-8 was really a simple architecture, without even a stack and CALL- and RET-instructions. Ah, the memories of wrapping together a small computers with a 6809, 8085 or 8031 and some ram, rom and IO devices.

Remembering drooling over the tools in my Tandy books and catalogs way back then, but ended up buying a soldering iron

That was interesting, and maybe even useful. I'll admit, I had forgotten about wire wrapping myself!

just got my order ... works great ..

In the 80's I worked at Singer - Link Flight Simulation translating schematics to wire wrapping lists for the factory workers to wire wrap backplanes and circuit cards. I still use it for occasional personal projects.

Thanks for the memories. My first micro was a wire wrapped 6502... which was a bit of a pain, as the 6502 was just the processor, no memory or peripherals or even clock like the modern microcontrollers. But (eventually) it worked!

my goodness...I must have these tools lying around somewhere... thank you for reminding me.;-)

Yes. I’ll use this. Great. I once in 1978 did a student job at Siemens Augsburg in fehlersuche of wire wrapped mainframe boards.

1:32 if you order vintage aviation parts that are decommissioned, you’ll see atleast some of these components use this method. I’m holding a piece of a retired control panel now that’s got 30 analog inputs using wire wrap

Nice! Back to the Future there! I think I have a couple of those wire wrap guns somewhere ... one was electric 👍🏻

I also like using the wire wrapping technique for my projects and I am using the same tool made by OK. However, the tool has a step right behind the insertion channel which tends to kink the wire when it is inserted. I filed that step down and polished it with rouge to form a smooth ramp. With that modification, the tool works perfectly for me. One hint: use the square pin headers for ww, the round ones don’t work reliably. But you can add some solder if you have to.

Wish I still had my wire wrapping supplies. It works great!

Hi Andreas - I've been following your channel now for some time, and I do like the videos showcasing the alternative ways to electronics - particular to POC projects as described in this video. Although providing an abundance of options when it comes to wire wrapping - for people like me with thumbs for fingers, this is not practical. I'm not badmouthing this insert in any way, but highlighting that these basic and almost forgotten techniques still have a place in the hobby world today, even if it comes with it's own challenges. I usually default to my soldering iron (non-regulated) as my tool to get things done, but in some cases even the most basic tools could be overkill - that is why I like this video and also your channel - which does not prompt me into a direction, but rather encourages to alternatives and inevitably the prolonging of the hobby mostly for amateurs en entrepreneurs thinking of pursuing these types of technologies as a supplement or main drive for a project. Respect and I'm looking forward to another vid, Greetings from Cape Town ZA

Useful video

I still do this with a hand wrap tool. Yes, the other methods are slow even making you own PCBs and yes it's easy to correct a mistake in design. I have about 6 different colours. Thanks, makes me feel not so old!

That small black piece of steel in the middle of the handle is a wire stripper. Push the wire through, slide it into the slot and pull the insulation off. You MUST insert the wire so that when you pull, the cutting blade presses onto the body of the tool. Get it the wrong way round and you will bend the blade. You can get wrapping wire that doesn't need stripping, but you need special pins with square edges that bite into the insulation. In the 1970s I worked for Burroughs Machines who had terminals in every branch of NatWest, Barclays, Midland and Yorkshire banks, and it was a regular task to do modifications to the wire-wrapped backplane.

The first electronic telephone switch that I worked on, an ITT-TE-400G, was totally built using wire wrap. You even "programmed" hunt groups by wire wrapping various pins together. I have also built dozens of IC based projects using wire wrap. I think I wore out at least two of the hobby type battery powered tools. I still have the manual tools and occasionally use them on Arduino projects similar to what he shows in the video.

Somehow your video's keep costing me money. But as it is well spend, it is no problem. Thank you for the video!

Never done wire-wrapping..but these are what I use to 'wire' my prototype circuits(protoboards/dual layer) with soldering.

The main disadvantage is that it builds height and the long pins has a risk of bending, causing short-circuits. I prefer soldering and use a small piece of experimental circuit board for external components. Another method I've used is experimental boards and solder using wire wrapping wire. Since this wire is so thin, it's rather easy to add more connections later since you can easily have 4-5 wires in the same hole. Heat up again with the soldering iron, stick in another wire. Doesn't build height.