foil wire cap

[space_cadet]

Has anyone ever pushed the cap into the barrel too deep? I did on one of my weapons so that the tip didn't touch the cap when it was depressed. It took awhile for me to find the problem. I really don't know how that was possible since I used a contact setter. I ended up just ripping out the wire. I've used this contact setter with all my other weapons and this is the first time it happened.

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Cadet à Space

[Purple Fencer]

Well, actually, the bottom of the tip doesn't come into direct contact with the wire cap (I used to think it did, also). The contact is thorugh the spring. The way the circuit design is, when the tip moves the metal collar that holds the screwa moves away from the metal part of the tip, thus breaking electcial contact and starting the process of firing the lights. Check out Rudy Volkmann's booklet on how the stuff works.

What ended up being the problem? I've made the mistake of not removing the itty bitty plastic ring when rewiring my epees (too many times, if truth be told), but I've nebver had your prob when doing a foil.

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Sam Signorelli -- I'll be mellow when I'm
DEAD!

[space_cadet]

Just to clear things up, it was a foil and yes, I have a book on electrical wiring and I agree that the current becomes partially open when the tip is depressed against the opponent's lame.
It was completely frustrating to find the problem. I ended up totally taking apart the foil except for the barrel. When using my volt meter on a good foil, I had one connection on the wire and the other connection on the tip. There's a current until the tip is depressed. On the bad foil, the current stayed with the tip depressed. I tested with a new tip and spring but that didn't work. Sometimes the volt meter would flicker with the new tip depressed but it didn't last. I tightened the barrel and pressed the contact setter into the barrel again. That didn't work either.
I didn't know what was wrong and ended up unscrewing the barrel and pulling out the wire.

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Cadet à Space

[oiuyt]

Uhm, what you've described in your second post basically shows that you didn't have the problem mentioned in the first post. If you still have a circuit with the tip depressed then the tip hasn't depressed far enough rather than has depressed too far. Either your spring is too long, the wire wasn't set far enough down, or you just have some sort of manufacturer's mismatch that doesn't work together (yeah, in THEORY all french type are the same, and all german type are the same, but that's clearly not the case once you start playing with parts from different sources).
Once the wire's glued you probably can't do anything with the contact setter (except possibly break the wire).

One fun thing that my team discovered last year is that they'd gotten a batch of foil pressure springs that were made w/an insulator coating the spring.... brilliant move by the manuafacturer. Completely unrelated to your problem, but another interesting story nonetheless.

It's kind of too late to help you with you foil now, post about problems before rewiring next time and we should be able to troubleshoot it for you.

One further note: In your first post you say "I did on one of my weapons so that the tip didn't touch the cap when it was depressed." In a foil the tip (via the spring) is ALWAYS in contact with the top of the wire, whether or not the tip is depressed doesn't change this. If you have this problem when depressed you already had the problem before depressing (note, this doesn't fit your description of your problem in your second post).

Hope that helps.

-B

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"Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

All your music are belongs to us- RIAA

[space_cadet]

Hmm, I don't recall which way things were going when I was testing with my volt-meter so my description of my testing is wrong. But in any case, I had one good weapon and one bad weapon and I was testing both at the same time to break down where the problem might be.

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Cadet à Space

[Stryder]

Space Cadet, you have a jacked-up tip.
Toss it, buy a new one and rewire the weapon for good measure.

I know exactly how the foil tip works and you two have confused even me!

More words of wisdom from Stryder