On 11/30/2010 1:52 AM, Smitty Two wrote:
In ,
wrote:



You have inspected millions of solder joints. I won't dispute that.
What were these joints on?
On circuit boards you are correct - and I stated that.

What kind of joints between 2 wires do you inspect that do not have a
mechanical connection component other than solder? On what?

Educate us please.

If they were not joints between 2 wires, what kind of joint were they?
( am assuming we are on target here and they were electrical
connections - although even most (although certainly not all) tinwork
has some crimping involved before soldering)

Wiring onto terminal strips GENERALLY involves a "hook" of some sort
on solid core connection wires.


I'm not saying you are wrong and I'm right - I'm just asking what
connections, and what kind of connections, on what, do you consider to
be adequate with no mechanical component to the connection other than
the solder.

It's true that most of those joints are components on circuit boards;
through hole and surface mount. But we regularly solder wires to flat
pads on circuit boards. No mechanical connection whatsoever, other than
the solder. We also solder wires to speaker terminals, again, no
mechanical wrap at all.

We solder wires to switches and other chassis mounted controls; some of
them are wrapped but many of them are not. A wire to a turret terminal,
sure, it should have a 75% mechanical wrap. But not everything benefits
from that.

As far as wire to wire, lap splicing is common in wiring, almost always
protected by shrink tubing, but that is more for electrical insulation
than mechanical reinforcement. Twisting is great for electrical work,
capped by a wire nut. Lap splicing is more common in electronics, as it
takes up far less room, and is easier to cover with shrink tubing.

We make high end audio gear, communication components for the
professional dive industry, optical encoder sub-assemblies used in all
manner of automated equipment, and virtual reality electronics, among
others. These are not garage shop customers, they're real companies with
world-wide markets, and actual engineers designing the stuff, and
ultimately approving our workmanship.

Solder, done well, is damn strong. It's true that some things are poorly
engineered, and I'll argue against a customer asking me to add solder to
a crimped connector.

I'm going to do a little test for our a.h.r. homeboy in Texas: I'm going
to take some 18 AWG wire, and hang weight on it until it breaks. Then
I'm going to cut the wire in half, and butt splice it with solder, and
test it again.

Cool, I await the results!!