Automated equipment is available, but it’s an order of magnitude more expensive.
It produces much more bulky wiring than soldering, being based on wrapping thin wires around a metal pin.
The “rat’s nest” result is reminiscent of that scene in A Beautiful Mind, and if you need to fix a wiring bug you may have to unpick lots of wiring to get at it, then you have to very carefully rewrap those joints afterwards. So design decisions are very important.
You literally unwrap them in reverse order. Since a wire is severely stressed during unwrapping you need to make another wire to replace it. 30 awg is the most popular thickness. The manual tools are only designed for one thickness, but electrical wrapping guns have replaceable bits so you can choose different wires for different jobs.
The unwrapping/rewrapping process is a lot nicer, in my opinion, than desoldering.
The speed of the wrap is not that important. You can make electrically and mechanically sound joints with ease by gently rotating the wrap tool. A kind of compression joint is formed by the stripped wire being under tension as it rounds each of the four sharp corners of the pin. It’s considerably easier than using a screwdriver.
Yes I use 30 AWG wire for all my projects but I would never consider wire wrapping. I point to point solder and make loops of cable for runs like memory etc.
I agree that soldering is better in almost every way. I am trying to find an acceptable alternative that doesn’t risk the birds’ health. Those examples in your post would probably take me days with a manual wrapping tool, so I’m glad my sights are set much lower.
I’d solder in an externally ventilated airbrush booth before I started down the wire wrapping path. However I selfishly fully support you doing so because I really want to see your build photos.
I only wrap two wires per pin. First wire is at bottom level on each pin it is to connect together.. Then, I skip a wire and put the next wire at bottom level. I put the missing wire between them at second level. So to remove any wire, I have only to remove two adjacent wires at most. Third level on the pinis reserved for bodges!
I used wire wrap at University back in the 80s and always enjoyed it. If you weren’t in a hurry, it was almost therapeutic.
Coincidentally, I just acquired a wire-wrap tool. I still use solder less breadboards, but it’s easy for things to get dislodged, so I use wire-wrap as the next stage in my prototypes before committing to a soldered version.
I’m also studying various types of crimp join, because for example connecting to short switch pins is not feasible with wrapping. A properly secured crimp has several advantages over either soldering or wrapping. Crimping a spade or dupont terminal to a pin could, I think, make repair and reuse very easy.
Again, this would be a bird-friendly technique, so I’m willing to go a long way in my search for solder-free methods.
