[evlatests] ACU modifications

[Jim Jackson]

Bill,

Sure, I'd be happy to elaborate.  I have dealt with this type of ACU from 
companies like Electrospace and Ford Aerospace in past jobs. The servo shop 
folks showed Rob, Jerry and I one of our Electrospace ACU's on the bench on 
Tuesday.  The modifications would involve modifying a large, not 
particularly well built, 25-30 year old wire wrap board loaded with 
probably 75-100 expensive, hard to find and obsolete IC's. The back side of 
these boards is a rat's nest of delicate wire-wrap wire several layers 
deep.  I have dealt with boards like this for many years and can tell you 
that attempting to dig into these old boards to make this kind of change 
would risk breaking or damaging wires, IC's and almost impossible to 
replace wire wrap pins.  When this happens, it is a very long, tedious and 
frustrating process to try to troubleshoot and repair them, often resulting 
in even further damage. If we mess even a couple of these things up, we 
will be in a heap of trouble because we currently have nothing to replace 
them with.

In a nutshell, I think it would be a very high risk activity to modify 
these things and that the servo group's time and expertise would be much 
better utilized if we allow them to continue to work on their design for a 
modern, higher performance and relatively inexpensive replacement 
ACU.   From my conversations with Bob Broilo and others in the servo group, 
I believe they will concur with this opinion.

Cheers,
Jim


At 09:48 AM 2/9/2006, Bill Sahr wrote:
>Jim,
>
>We already have concentrated on the software solutions 1st.  Done
>& in place.  Would you please elaborate on why hardware modifications
>are a "very bad" idea.
>
>Bill Sahr
>
>Jim Jackson wrote:
>>I hear there are suggestions to make hardware modifications to the 
>>ACUs.  I spoke with Bob Broilo and the servo shop yesterday and took a 
>>look at the wire wrap boards in the ACU. The unanimous consensus is that 
>>it is a VERY BAD Idea to attempt any hardware modification to these 
>>units.  Let's concentrate on the software solutions first.
>>Jim
>>
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