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I was always intrigued about what is wire wrapping, I already have two wire wrap wire reels bought at eBay some time ago for 8 EUR (12 USD) each but I use it as connection wires for soldering.

Thanks to this great explanation of Bil Herd at hackaday I discovered what it is and how useful can it be for prototyping. I immediately went to buy a wire wrap tool online and I found it cost at least 20 USD, to expensive for the usage I will give to it.

Here I will explain how did a simple wire wrapping tool with results like a professional one.

Comercial wire wrap tool

A wire wrap tool is essentially a tube with a center hole (to place the pin around which the wire wrap will be created) and an adjacent hole (for the wire), I will try to replicate this.

I have used an aluminium can, Polymorph Thermoplastic, two sewing pins or similar (one of 1mm and the other of 0.6mm of diameter aprox.) and obviously wire wrapping wire.

To start we will cut a rectangular sheet from the tin 8mm wide aprox. and wrap it one or two turns around the bigger pin, then place the small pin adjacently and wrap an other turn around both like in the photo.

Then heat the thermoplastic and wrap all the ensemble leaving both ends uncovered.

When the plastic has cooled down, we can extract the pins and we have our wire wrap tool finished, lets see the results: