In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2010-07-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Ignoramus31310 wrote:

[ ... ]

This one is a ratcheting, safety type. It would not release until I
completed the crimp.

That's good. But it sounds like you don't have adequate match between wire
size, terminal type (wire size acceptance range), and crimper dies. All
must
match.

Amen! That is why I have a bucket (plastic cat litter bucket)
full of crimpers -- just for terminals -- and not counting the hydraulic
ones for 8 ga and larger.

I've got a similar bucket full of air tools. One of the
benefits of having cats. :-)

And, crimping is for stranded wire, not solid wire. That said, in a pinch
I
solder the terminal to the solid wire.

I have also soldered stranded wire into terminals.

With the hazard that if it is subject to vibration, it is far
more likely to fail -- especially if you don't have and use anti-wicking
tweezers.

All true, but in a pinch ...


The largest example was
when
I was attaching big copper terminals to some AWG #4 wire, to power a
lighting
panel for a stage. I was a teenager, and did not have the humongous and
expensive crimper. I needed to use a small terminal, as there was not
physical
space for the usual mechanical wire-clamp terminal.

The terminal was made from copper tubing, one end being flattened and
punched to
accept the large terminal stud, the other end being an open cup. So, I
held the
terminal in a vise and soldered the big wire into the cup with a propane
torch
and plumbers' solder and Nocorrode grease flux, just like soldering copper
pipe.

That sounds good -- though a proper eutectic lead/tin solder
would have been better with a rosin flux -- and a solder pot to dip the
wire into to tin it first.

I was a teenager doing a one-off job. Well, two-off. So, no reason to get all
that nice kit. I did pre-tin the wire and the cup before sweating wire to cup.


Was this AWG #4 wire solid or stranded?

Stranded.


The school maintenance folk were surprised at this approach, but soldered
connections were (and are still) acceptable under the National Electrical
Code.

Certainly under the NEC -- but they are not acceptable with
aerospace connections. Crimp terminals are by far preferred there.

Absolutely. Crimp is far more reliable, especially under vibration.

Solder-type coax connectors are quite unreliable - the heating-cooling cycle
causes the big nut that clamps the shield to unscrew over time, causing open
shields. I found this out when diagnosing an unreliable Xyplex satistical
multiplexer (connects multiple VT100 terminals to a VAX, in the days before
ethernet became practical). Many of the BNC connectors had open shield
connections. The solution was to cut all the solder BNC connectors off the
RG-58 cable and to install crimped BNC connectors in their place. If I recall,
we used AMP tooling and connectors. Anyway, problem solved, almost overnight.

Joe Gwinn