On 2010-07-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
On 2010-07-04, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
[ ... ]
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 ...
Understood. And where you were doing it -- you would not have
much vibration -- unless perhaps for a performance of "Riverdance". :-)
[ ... ]
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.
No reason -- and probably no resources either. :-)
I did pre-tin the wire and the cup before sweating wire to cup.
Good. Though for that size wire, a solder pot (and a pre-dip in
the rosin flux) makes for a more thorough tinning job.
Was this AWG #4 wire solid or stranded?
Stranded.
So the pre-tinning goes without saying then. :-)
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.
Hmm ... various styles available. I've got two which could do
the job.
The first one does a separate crimp for the shield termination
and for the center conductor pin. This is more likely to be used for
BNC style connectors.
The other crimps both the shield and the center conductor at the
same time. There are two small windows which the crimper reaches in
through to crimp the center conductor. But these are normally for
insert coax pins to go in block terminals -- and D-series connectors
like the 13W3 used by Sun for monitor connections. (I have been looking
for the connector inserts for a long time -- just to have a few which
work with that crimper. :-)
Have you ever worked with the shield termination ferrules used
for daisy-chaining a bunch of shields together and ending with a
standard insulated wire to get a crimp-on pin for going into a block
where the shields are not truly coax, but rather things like shielded
twisted pair for low level signals but not RF frequencies? The crimper
is the 59000 IIRC, with a whole series of interchangeable dies for
different shield diameters. When you find them on eBay they may or may
not have dies in them -- but the vendor almost never tells you which
dies are installed. (Identified by color stripes to match the color of
the ferrule which fits.) Purple for RG-174 (skinny coax cable) and
similar size single conductor shielded (and perhaps some very small
shielded twisted pair), and other colors for larger sizes, with brown
and green being the ones I used most often.
Enjoy,
DoN.
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