atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Frame construction

Does anyone know where I can find some reading material RE the construction of CO framing? I know a few basic tennets, such as telco relay racks are traditionally 23 inches wide as opposed to computer and audio racks of 19 inches, and a few other little tidbits that I have found here on the Sundance forum. (I have found a source of steel 23 inch relay racks that are 72 inches high for 130 delivered.)

I am wanting to find out about layouts, assembly of the cable ladders, where to get said cable ladders and the official way of mounting things on these frames. If I am going to do something with a switch, I guess the first thing to do is build the foundation (frame). I have found many of the frame accessories (rings, fannout devices, pegs, etc, are available on e-bay, but the actual ladders are not.

Any referrence material would be helpful, whether BSPs, articles or books.

Best,

Joe
Thankyou agian,

Joe

Joe, have you joined the singingwires group yet? A lot of the guys on there have a barn full of this stuff, and they make buy/sell requests for these kinds of things all the time.

Needless to say this, this stuff is getting more and more rare and hard to find. Some people actually fabricate their own racks, and if it comes to that, Arthur posted a formula for having paint mixed [I think by Ace Hardware] that matched the Western Electric gray exactly. I just looked for it, but I'm not sure if it was in this forum, or one of the others.

Good luck with your endeavors!

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Joe -

I've got manuals on this, but they're literally thousands of pages in bound books. I'll see if I can dig out some of the most relevant and scan it for you.

When you talk "ladders" I'm assuming you mean the cable rack ladders that were mounted to the frames or walls and then had the cabling tied down to them. There were also rolling ladders - like you had in some libraries - in the bigger offices.

Newton Instruments manufactured a lot of that stuff. Their old catalog showed how everything fit together. Go to www.enewton.com/ and download their (new) catalog in PDF form (or order a copy - they used to be free, not sure now). If the new one is as good as the old one it'll have everything you want and more.

Then we'll get you into cable sewing and you'll never want to look at a tyrap again ;-)

Sam

Joe -

Brain cells are starting to unfreeze.

At GTE we started an exchange by putting in one main beam that ran the long way across the room at 8' AFF. Then cross beams were installed perpendicular to this (all beams were bolted to the walls with "L" brackets). The 23" frames were installed and as they were 8' tall they slipped under the cross beams and bolted onto them with "j" hooks. Then they were all bolted together and drilled into the floor. Then the cable rack (ladders) were installed providing a raceway to get from any point to any other point in the room. They also bolted on to the racks and the beams with "j" hooks. There were two sets of cable ladders - one at 8' AFF for signal and a higher one at 9' for power.

Everything bolted together and the more you put in and bolted down the stronger the whole structure got. By the time you were done you could park cars up there.

CO MDFs were free standing and two sided. The "House" cabling went to the Vertical side (where the blocks were mounted vertically). Equipment cables went to the Horizontal side of the frame, where the blocks were mounted.....you can figure it out.

Cross connects were run through rings from one side to the other or on the same side, as required. At GTE, all the equipment cables and most of the house cable was 24 AWG, but cross connects had to be 22 AWG so as to diminish the "weak point". Originally the blocks on the frame were all solder, but later they were wire wrap (which IMHO was almost as good, a lot faster, a lot easier and a whole lot safer to use).

I'll try to look in the dreaded basement tomorrow for GTEPs (same as BSPs).

Sam

OK Joe.

I found and scanned 2 GTEPs: 237-050-204, Central Office Erection Methods Floor & Wall Angles, Channel Braces and Bay & Frame Uprights and 237-050-206, Erection Methods -Central Office Cable Runway & Trough. I was able to scan most of the pages. The ones I couldn't get were 11 x17 fold-out pages that really weren't that important.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that you owe me. This was a pain in the butt.

The worse news is that the files are BIG. I don't know if I can email them. The first one is 61mb and the second is a mere 27mb.

I don't know how fast your connection is or even if my carrier will let me send files this large. If not they'll have to be mailed.

Let me know.

Sam

Sam

For large file (up to 300MB?) try Send Space. This works great on large files that are limited by your email service.

You have to register to use it, and any receiving party also has to register.

I have never had any problems with this service and it's free and I have never received email/spam.

Send Space Home Page

Hi Sam,

PM sent...

Thank you!

Joe

PM sent.

Sam

Goggle ATT 76300 and 76400 practice

Thank you John!

Downloading as I type.

Joe