I never hurts to be more careful, unless it causes other problems such as breaking the lead or the part because it's being held by needle nose pliers.
I've yet to break a glass diode (or other part) by gently bending the lead while holding the part and letting the lead take up its own radius of bend. I couldn't say how many hundreds (or thousands) of such parts I've handled since I picked up my first glass diode some decades ago. What is dangerous, and I've seen it happen in labs where someone is trying to work too quickly, is holding the lead with pliers up against the body, and then bump the body or the opposite lead. There's TREMENDOUS force placed on the body of the part if that happens. It'll snap one end right off of a glass diode. I prefer soft fingers to hard steel when working around fragile parts. So whatever system you use, be g-e-n-t-l-e and don't work when you're in a hurry or tired. I'd guess that the biggest source of all errors in building is trying to work quickly or when tired. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- I favour the method of holding the leads of the K2's D36 in needle nose pliers then bending the wire end with finger pressure to form a smooth bend to the required hole spacing. Bending the leads directly with needle nosed pliers alone would be really asking for trouble by the increased stress on the diode body. The same rules apply to all other fragile small components which could be damaged by stress. Agreed, other relatively more robust diodes such as the 1N4148 and similar are able to have their leads bent with finger pressure alone without any apparent ill effects. All a matter of learning by experience of what is permissible and finding out the hard way what is not. Bob, G3VVT K2 #4168 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
