I came up with this idea for Tortoise wiring. A Tortoise's tail. I soldered PCB terminal blocks to a prototype board then soldered a wire from each terminal to the Tortoise contacts. The board is mounted to the tortoise with adhesive putty (we'll see if this holds up). The terminals are mounted so wires are fed from the bottom, and screws are adjusted from the front side. I had considered using the 8 pin edge connector cards, but that would still just leave me with 8 contacts I'd need to solder a wire to. What I really wanted was a way to screw I/O wires to the tortoise. Potential Problems I am not sure about the long term effectiveness of mounting the board with putty. I don't know how well these PCB screw terminals hold something in place, especially when it is wired from the bottom. Does anyone have any comments about these concerns or see any other potential problems here?
Should work just fine, Greg. The elastic band wouldn't harm though it will eventually perish. The only possible issue may be dislodging the terminal board whilst wiring. I went a similar way but used an eight-way connector with the male portion soldered directly to the Tortoise with flying leads from the female. The pins are crimped in the female and used crimp ferrules on the end of the flying leads.
Here is what I came up with as a solution that I have been using for years. It is rock solid and has not failed me once in 15 years...The wiring works well and is extremely easy to change out if necessary. Although with a Tortoise that is not ver often. Photo Gallery PeteC
NCE Switch-It, Tortoise, termination strip and connector. Allows for easy wiring changes and change out of the Tortoise if it fails. Colour coding I used for the centre 6 contacts (the Tortoise's internal) red = track black = track yellow = frog power blue = indication + white = normal + lemon = reverse + A red and black wire is also used for motor power from the Switch-It. I have adopted a 8-way terminal strip since this image was taken to allow doubling up of the Switch-It's motor output for crossovers.
All nice neat ways of doing it. Now I just got to get my layout going. Basement cleaning in process!!
Tortoise Terminal Tortoise Terminal 2.96 mm pitch pcb terminals. I'm doing away with the Tortoise Tails. I'll prep new Tortoise motors with terminals soldered directly to the traces. I would have done this straight off if I'd found the 2.96 mm pitch terminals. One of the problems I've run into with the Tortoise Tail is screw head orientation. Horizontal orientation makes it hard to connect wires in tight spaces. Vertical screw head orientation leaves a free path to the screw terminal. The Tortoise Terminal plan will have vertical screw head orientation.
