ML EQUINOX coil discussion thread

[Tim Mason]

Do I power the unit up for the test above?

[Skippy]

Do it powered OFF. It's just a short-circuit test, so in principle it won't matter... but if you power on the machine with no coil connected, it switches itself off after a few seconds anyway.

[Tim Mason]

I re soldered everything to the pinout and it still cycles like trying to start car but it just keeps turning over with the two bars and I can hear a click when it goes from cycle to cycle in the startup

[Skippy]

I don't think there's any chance you've caused damage by simply swapping Pin 1 and Pin 2 wires over, it's still the same inductance/resistance of the coil. You can check the resistance between Pin 1 and Pin on the coil connector , as you see from Post #1 it's about 0.5 Ohms.
Do the wire colours in your cable match up with those I described ? It's just possible ML have changed the cable spec, or changed the wiring, so different colours do different things?
When you broke the coil connector, was it a 'violent' snap, or something simple like one pin fell out when you unscrewed it? I'm just wondering if the coil may have been electronically damaged by the mishap. Was the machine powered up at the time the connector broke? The danger signal is Pin 1 , the main transmit signal, which is over 10 volts in magnitude, and if that connected with some of the low-voltage stuff, damage could occur.
And there's always the possibility of electrostatic damage whenever any electronics device is handled/soldered.

[Tim Mason]

Is this correct from the (Solder or back side of the plug)

[Skippy]

Your diagram looks OK to me.
Do you have a multimeter? Here's a resistance beep-out for the other pins, which I would expect to match those of your other two coils ( though I only have the stock coil, I've not had my mitts on any others ).
Pin 7 to Pin 4 : 2000 Ohms
Pin 7 to Pin 5 : 2000 Ohms
Pin 3 to Pin 4 : 2000 Ohms
Pin 3 to Pin 5 : 2000 Ohms
These 4 are almost certainly caused by the mystery device fitted on both output from the pre-amp ( some protection part, like zeners/transzorbs etc )

Pin 4 to Pin 5 : 350 Ohms ( this is between the two outputs )

Pin 7 to Pin 3 : 3600 Ohms ( this is across the power supply, and it's probably the resistor divider network creating the virtual 'half-supply' , or it's those transient protectors things again.)

I didn't measure Pin 8, from memory it was quite high resistance.

[Skippy]

I've just had a coil in for repair, where the cable was chewed up by a pet rabbit. As well as three of the thin single-colour wires being damaged, the screened cable took a beating, and two-thirds of the screen wires were cut. It was only when I started trying to sort out the damaged screen did I discover something I had not noticed:
The screen is made from enamelled copper wire

It's just a simple lapped screen, and I guess about 30 strands. The inner core looked to be regular tinned multi-strand wire.
I grouped the 20 broken strands into 4 groups of 5 wires. The enamel burnt back easily with a soldering iron, thankfully, and each bundle of 5 was soldered to a single thicker length of ECW, formed into a small loop to give some flexibility and strain-resistance.
I've no idea how little/much my repair has compromised the performance , it's a pretty short repair, and one-third of the shield remained intact. I took it to a nearby park, and it tested fine when compared to another good coil, I'll no doubt get some feedback from the owner when he's tried it out.

I assume using 'Litz-style' screened cable would increase the speed of the cable, no doubt related to the TX signal being a square-wave of up to 40 kHz max frequency.

[PSS]

Thank you Skippy. You couldn't have made repairing/replacing the plug any easier and straight forward.