W

  1. Symbol for watt or wattage.
  2. Heavy duty portable power cable, one to six conductors, 600 in, 60° C.

W Crimp

A confined crimp that makes two longitudinal indentations which form a W cross section.

W Terminal

A soldered terminal that provides solder connection points at both sides of a terminal block.

Wafer

  1. Another word for a printed circuit header. Also sometimes referred to as a base. 
  2. In semiconductors, a circular slice of silicon to be cut up into silicon chips after processing.

Wafercon

Premium line trademarked shrouded and unshrouded headers, pre-assembled to a PCB that mates to Premium line .093" standard receptacles.

Wall Thickness

A term used that expresses the thickness of a layer of applied insulation or jacket.

WAN

Wide Area Network. A network that allows LANs to communicate over a wide area, generally spanning a geographic area wider than a single city.

Watt

A unit of electrical power. One watt is equivalent to the power in work per unit time required for one ampere of current to flow under an electrical voltage difference of one volt in a DC circuit.

Watt-hour

A unit of energy.

Wattmeter

An electrical instrument used to measure power.

Wave Soldering

A process by which items to be soldered are brought in contact with a gently overflowing wave of liquid solder that is circulated by a pump in an appropriately-designed solder pot reservoir.

Waveform

A graphical representation of a varying quantity. Usually, time is represented on the horizontal axis, and the current or voltage value is represented on the vertical axis.

Wavelength

  1. The distance between the periodic nodes of a wave to the next corresponding point, such as the distance from one crest of a wave to the next. Wavelength is measured in units of length, such as feet or meters.
  2. The ratio of the velocity of the wave to the frequency of the wave.

Wavelength Division Multiplexer

See WDM.

WDM

Wavelength Division Multiplexer. A passive device that transmits signals at different wavelengths through the same fiber.

Wedge Bond

Metal-to-metal lead bond formed by a wedge-shaped tool. It may be a cold weld, ultrasonic, or thermal compression bond.

Wedge-type Connector

A connector in which the contact between the conductor and the connector is made by pressure exerted by a wedge.

Welding

A process in which the oxide layer covering a metal surface is eliminated, and the joining surfaces of the two substrates are brought into intimate contact with sufficient heat energy to cause thermal diffusion of both metals across an interface, resulting in the development of a heterogeneous layer or zone between the surfaces, thus creating a strong inter-atomic metal alloy bond there.

See also Sticking Force.

WE Plug

See FCC Plug.

Wetting

The formation of a relatively uniform smooth, unbroken, and adherent film of solder to a base material.

Whisker

A single crystal growth resembling fine wire, which appears most frequently on components that have been electroplated with tin. Whisker growth requires no voltage.

Wicking

Desoldering method that utilizes pre-fluxed braid of stranded wire, or braid used with flux. The wick material is placed on the solder joint and a heated iron tip is applied to the wick. Capillary action draws the solder up into the wick material.

Width

On flat cable, the distance between edges of the cable.

Wiping

The translational action that occurs when contacts are mated with a sliding action. Wiping has the effect of removing small amounts of contamination from the contact surfaces, thus establishing better conductivity. The distance the wiping occurs on a contact is referred to as wiping length.

Wire

A solid or stranded group of conductors that has a low resistance to current flow, together with any associated insulation.

Wire Barrel

A type of terminal configuration. The two main categories of wire barrel are open barrel and closed barrel terminals.

Wire Bonding

The joining of components (wire, metal bonding surfaces, underlying insulating layer, and substrate) of wire electrical connection.

Wire Gauge

See AWG.

Wire Lead Machine

A device that measures, cuts, forms, bends, strips, and straightens wire leads. These devices vary from simple hand or bench-style tools to high-speed equipment.

Wire Pull Out Force

The force required to separate a wire from a contact to which it has been attached by solder, IDT, crimping, or welding.

Wire Specification

Usually, the sum of wire size (AWG) plus insulation diameter. For crimped tooling, also the strip length.

Wire Stop

A stop at the end of a terminal wire barrel that prevents wire from passing completely through the barrel so the wire will not interfere with the function of the contact.

Wire Table

Table of sizes and properties of round copper wire.

See also AWG.

Wire Trap Connectors

A Premium line .098" (2,5 mm) connector system that mechanically holds stripped cable in a simple but very effective manner.

Wire Wrap

A termination method in which discrete wire is tightly wrapped around an angular, usually square, post (also called a terminal or wire wrap tail). Wire wrap terminals are available in one, two, or three-wrap lengths.

Wiring Closet

Building space for telecommunications equipment, data communications equipment, cable, terminations, cross-connect intelligent hubbing devices, and administration subsystems. Wiring closets are located at the interface point between the backbone cabling and the horizontal wiring.

Withdrawal Force

The force required to disconnect two halves of a connector.

Withstanding Voltage

Test voltage that an electrical connector withstands for one minute without electrical breakdown. The voltage is applied between conductors and grounding devices of connectors in various combinations.

Word

The number of bits that one CPU register can store. Word size is usually the same as the width of the data bus. Most bytes in computers are eight bits, so a word is usually a multiple of eight. Common sizes are two eight-bit bytes (16 bits) or four eight-bit bytes (32 bits). Larger computers may have 64-bit words.

Work Curve

A graph that plots the pull-out force, indent force, and/or relative conductivity of a crimp joint as a function of various depths or distances, a measure of pull-out/indent/crimping deformation. The work of pull-out/indentation/crimping, deformation, etc., is then determined via the area under the curve.

Working Voltage

The maximum recommended voltage for continuous use.

WORM

Write Once Read Many

WP

Weatherproof construction, impregnated cotton braids, 80° C.

WTB

Abbreviation for wire-to-board.