How to put more than 1 wire (and a capacitor) in a keystone jack (adapt-a-damper)

[Louis P]

Hi,

I just purchased an adapt-a-damper, and I'm having issues punching the keystone jack.

I have the proper tool. With one wire, no problem. With 2 wires (pin 4, ground), it didn't work at first. I had to strip the bottom wire to get it to work.

However, I'm having no luck with either the servo's +5v or the ground when I try to add a capacitor to keep the servo "walk" to a minimum, as suggested in another thread. There's also the issue that without capacitor, even with fan at 0%, the servo makes a high-pitched humming noise. (I assume that would go away with a cap?)

Any tricks to punch more than one wire, let alone with capacitor leads, into the keystone jack?

Thanks!
Louis

 

[Bryan Mayland]

The humming noise is usually more the servo binding than it is needing a capacitor. The capacitor is needed if the servo seems to freak out and just move on its own to an uncommanded position and then quickly flip back to where it is supposed to be.

I have a hard time punching down the wires into the keystones as well, due to the wire being thin stranded and not a thicker gauge solid core wire like the keystone expects. I usually strip the wire and tin it to make a more solid connection even though that's not how you're supposed to do it (but this isn't exactly ethernet we're doing here).

As far as the capacitor, WBegg used the plan of just running the capacitor legs over the top of the punchdown forks and soldering the end to the exposed bits of wire coming out the side of the keystone. See the photo in his post in this other recent thread.

 

[Curtis_Aotea]

I usually strip the wire and tin it to make a more solid connection even though that's not how you're supposed to do it

Following advice in the adapt-a-damper thread, I solder-spliced a short length of solid core ethernet cable onto the fan and servo wires, then was able to punchdown the ethernet wires as per keystone specification. However, your solution is more elegant, Brian!