THIRD TRY FOR ALIGNER HITS THE MARK
I decided to go back to the poly foam I used for the first iteration of an aligner board, but selected a thinner material. That does indeed force the lamps more orthogonal to the PCB just I wished, but leaves enough of the lamp and holder jutting out to hold in position in a honeycomb cell.
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| Thin foam aligner |
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| Aligner helps bend holders partly into position |
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| Black foam just visible atop the white honeycomb |
ARRIVAL OF NEW ALIGNER BOARD AND PLACEMENT OVER LAMP ASSEMBLIES
My new board arrived today and I eagerly moved to the workbench to see how easily it slipped over the lamp holders and how well it aligned them. Well, that was the goal.
Instead, I found that the holes I had placed in the acrylic were just too close to the dimensions of the lamp holder. The lamps barely fit through, some were snug, and any where I had soldered in the slightly larger glass bulbs of the new lamp supply wouldn't fit at all!
It would be as much a nightmare to reach in and move more than 190 lamp assemblies to the proper position so that the aligner board would drop over them, as it was to push in the 190+ lamps with the original IBM mechanical approach.
This won't work.
MORE DESIGN WORK TO DEVELOP AN ALIGNER THAT WILL WORK AS DESIRED
I am in the first stage of the new design, seeking the best approach to get this aligner board to work. It has to be easy enough to fit over the existing lamp holders when they are plugged into the PCB, but still move them enough to cause them to all drop into the honeycomb cell openings.