Who Made Those 1950's Set Screw "Wirenuts"?

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al hildenbrand

al hildenbrand

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Minnesota
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Electrical Contractor, Electrical Consultant, Electrical Engineer
I don't have an image, as I'm trying to locate one.

Over the years I have encountered, mostly in obvious DIY wiring, a "wirenut" that has a screw on hard black plastic cover, over a brass barrel. The brass barrel has a somewhat large set screw in its side.

To make a splice, conductors are slid into the brass barrel and the set screw is tightened. The hard black plastic cover is then "screwed" onto the brass barrel to insulate the conductive parts.

I have observed that these connectors are prone to loosening, and are especially problematic when the conductors are not tightly pre-twisted.

Does anyone remember who made these and/or know of any links to info on them?
 
Wow! They're still made. Too weird. Till this moment, I have always suspected that this was an abberation that sold well to DIYers for a while.

Thanks, Bob. :)
 
I am with you 100%, I had run across them once in a while and assumed they where old and not still made.

One day while reading a Ideal catalog I saw them and was very surprised.
 
What's even weirder is walking into a supply house and seeing a brand new 1950's era box of them still on the shelf. Yes, I have one of those places near me. :cool:
 
iwire said:
Sounds like they would make great small motor connectors, the temp rating is high. :)
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I was struck by that, as well, as I read the cut sheet you linked to. And I noted, with incredulity, the claim of these things being "Ideal for applications where vibration is a problem." Maybe the new ones are improved. As for the old ones, I have found way too many of them loose, in low vibration settings, to believe that vibration would somehow make for a tighter installation.
 
al hildenbrand said:
I was struck by that, as well, as I read the cut sheet you linked to. And I noted, with incredulity, the claim of these things being "Ideal for applications where vibration is a problem." Maybe the new ones are improved. As for the old ones, I have found way too many of them loose, in low vibration settings, to believe that vibration would somehow make for a tighter installation.
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I'm willing to bet that like you surmised they were put on by DIY's and also willing to bet they didn't ever tighten the setscrew but simply twisted them on like a standard wire nut.

The design of the shell screwing on over the setscrew makes it hard for the setscrew to work loose IMHO.
 
al hildenbrand said:
I don't have an image, as I'm trying to locate one.

Over the years I have encountered, mostly in obvious DIY wiring, a "wirenut" that has a screw on hard black plastic cover, over a brass barrel. The brass barrel has a somewhat large set screw in its side.

To make a splice, conductors are slid into the brass barrel and the set screw is tightened. The hard black plastic cover is then "screwed" onto the brass barrel to insulate the conductive parts.

I have observed that these connectors are prone to loosening, and are especially problematic when the conductors are not tightly pre-twisted.

Does anyone remember who made these and/or know of any links to info on them?
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The ones I used were Hi Scale
Yellow Box
Brown , but some earlier ones were white

I'm not a DIY :D

They didn't loosen as much on a soldered connection. yes I have done that also.
 
cpal said:
The ones I used were Hi Scale
Yellow Box
Brown , but some earlier ones were white.
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I remember Hi. I shudder to think how many of their twist on wirenuts I installed.

I could believe a lot of the set screw wirenuts I've found in the wild came from them.

Google didn't give me any satisfaction when looking for Hi electrical products.

Any one recall their history?
 
al hildenbrand said:
I remember Hi. I shudder to think how many of their twist on wirenuts I installed.

I could believe a lot of the set screw wirenuts I've found in the wild came from them.

Google didn't give me any satisfaction when looking for Hi electrical products.

Any one recall their history?
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Hmmm....I learned something new today. I occasionally run across an old red or yellow wirenut that says "HI-4" or "HI-6" on the top. I'm guessing these are the Hi Scale brand wirenuts you're talking about?
 
peter d said:
Hmmm....I learned something new today. I occasionally run across an old red or yellow wirenut that says "HI-4" or "HI-6" on the top. I'm guessing these are the Hi Scale brand wirenuts you're talking about?
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Yup. That's them.

The very nuts that toughened my scholastically soft fingers.

The name "Hi Scale" that Charlie uses in his post is a longer name than I recall . . . but back then, I was apprenticing, and I was in engine school and I wasn't intending to stay with the trade, so I wasn't paying attention the way I do now.

I simply remember them as HI nuts. Once I was introduced to the technology in the 3M Scotchlok I never looked back.

This thread, now, has me curious about who HI was.
 
We use the set screw wire nuts in the lab for experimental motor connections, and sometimes a few will get borrowed for home use.

What I discovered in my DIY use of these is that the conductors need to lay in the correct fashion under the set screw, otherwise the set screw will tighten against the wire and jam the wires into an unstable state. The set screw is tight, and the wires seem firmly in place, but then you wiggle the wires a bit and they snap into a different 'lay'. Suddenly both the wires and the set screw are loose.

Loose pre-twisting seemed to make this worse. I suspect that tight pretwisting would solve the problem, but instead I went with making sure that the conductors were laying side by side, so that the set screw would be at its deepest for any given total wire cross section.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
. . . I went with making sure that the conductors were laying side by side, so that the set screw would be at its deepest for any given total wire cross section.
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I was on the verge of saying that until I finished your post. I agree with your reasoning, and apply that to some stranded-wire and multi-wire connections.

I found a box of those some years ago, and thought they were the greatest thing ever. I ended up using them on various connections I knew I would make and remake several times, for one reason or another.

I'm glad to see they're still around. Gotta put them on my next shopping list, although I'll probably end up getting them through Amazon.
 
Funny, don't know that I've ever seen on of them. I've seen the kind that you crimp and then put the rubber boot over, which I hate when I run into them.
 
peter d said:
What's even weirder is walking into a supply house and seeing a brand new 1950's era box of them still on the shelf. Yes, I have one of those places near me. :cool:
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There is a hardware store about 40 miles from here that still has some new old stock ceramic tubes. As in knob and tube ceramic tubes.

I have a couple of the set screw wire nuts in my collection. I also have a couple ceramic ones. Pure ceramic, no metal, with threads cast into them.

Our local Lowe's still sells cleat type switches. Remember the round switches you stuck to the wall with no enclosure meant to be fed with open conductors? Those are cleats.
 
K8MHZ said:
There is a hardware store about 40 miles from here that still has some new old stock ceramic tubes. As in knob and tube ceramic tubes.
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I hear they're great for knife sharpening.

I have a couple of the set screw wire nuts in my collection. I also have a couple ceramic ones. Pure ceramic, no metal, with threads cast into them.
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I have a few of those, too, along with a ceramic octagon box (complete with brass 8-32 inserts.) I never did see a ceramic cover.

Our local Lowe's still sells cleat type switches. Remember the round switches you stuck to the wall with no enclosure meant to be fed with open conductors? Those are cleats.
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Actually, the cleats are the two-wire elongated knobs that hold the surface wiring. You've seen them on M*A*S*H in the tents, offices, and OR's. The older ones were turn switches; toggles came later.

I remember there being holes on the back side of the ceramic base that were filled with black goop, for the purpose of covering the heads of the screws that hold the metallic switch parts to the base.

The switches you're talking about are for the surface wiring. They usually have black Bakelite or brown plastic snap-on covers. They also made receptacles, lampholders and, rosettes (for pendant sockets).
 
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