I own a vintage audio equipment, that supports remote control connection through a socket populated on the back. I decided to build my own remote controller for the unit. Unfortunately this is a custom type of connector, and you cannot really buy plug for this any more.
In my case the equipment is a TEAC X700L with a connector populated for the remote, that needs a so called “WAKA” plug. But the description here might adopted for any kind of connectors.
So I have figured out the pin thickness should be used, and started to build the plug from sketch.
First I have 3D printed a frame for the plug, and also a spacer, that will help me line up the things. (I have 3D printed this, because I do own a 3D printer, but if you don’t, you might came up with your own idea here.)
For preparing the pins, I have first twisted the whole wire with a drill – I did have pulled backwards the drill while twisting -, this way the wire will be much straighter, and a bit harder. After cutting the pins to size, I have flattened one end, and sharpened to other.
This plug requires a pin with 1.6mm diameter, however I could only manage to have a 1.5mm thick copper wire. But I hope it will do the job.
When everything was prepared, I have inserted the spacer directly to the machine, covered it with masking tape. Inserted all the pins to it’s place.
Applied silicone glue into the plug frame, and placed the frame into it’s position, here the spacer helped me to align the frame.
After the glue was set, I have disconnected the plug, and applied some more silicone from the other side, as I have found some deficiency there.
The idea with the silicone, is that the silicone will stand the high temperature while soldering wires to the plug’s back side. But it was more harder to scrape off the silicone from the soldering points, than I’ve expected. You might want to apply a coat of something (?) here, to prevent the the silicone to stick.
I also have applied some contact spay on the pins to prevent the copper from corrosion.
At this point the custom plug is ready, we are able to connect a box with switches as a wired remote controller the unit, but my plan is to build an RF remote control set.