Harry Muscle wrote:
If you use crimp/compression connections the crimper has to be one that
the manufacurer says can be used.

My experience is that solid wire does not work in a crimp (#14-#10
range) - partly because too much torque can be applied from the wire the
crimp connection. Looking at a panduit catalog I didn't see any
limitation on solid wire. Make sure crimp connectors are listed for
solid wire if that is what you have (small gauge stranded aluminum wire
probably does not exist).

My suggestion would be to use copper/aluminum rated wire nuts; crimp in
small wire sounds like a pain. In general I look for wire nuts with a
'live spring' - the spring deforms over the wires making a tighter
connection.

In the trivia department, in compression connections on larger wire, the
sleeve is compressed so tight there is a cold weld between the sleeve
and wire.

Bud--



From: "barbarow" - Find messages by this author

See
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/know...cle/0,16417,56...

(link doesn't work)


*****

Thanks. I know about those, however, even though they are UL approved
the CPSC has apparently shown in tests that they do in fact fail under
normal conditions ... hence they do not approve of them. Therefore I
was hoping to find a solution that both testing agencies approve of ...
the only one I'm aware of is the COPALUM tool. They don't seem to have
as negative a view of CO/ALR approved devices (even though they do say
that they also have failed in tests). But since not everything is
available as CO/ALR compatible you're back to having to use pigtails,
at least for some things.

Harry