Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

Any help would be greatly appreciated! ::safety::

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

From memory I believe use the yellow for 12-10awg and the blue from 16-14 awg. If you are crimping directly onto the CIMs then use the blue ones, if you have more leads going between the CIMs lead and the MC then use the appropriate connector for whatever gauge wire/breaker you use (recommended yellow-12awg-40a).

Our team preferes the fork connecters, such as these: http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p...minals/534626/ because it allows us to remove cables without undoing the screw all the way.

However the best connector would have to be Anderson PowerPoles, provide genderless and tool-less connections and make swapping motors out easy: http://www.powerwerx.com/anderson-po...owerpole-sets/

Hope that helps

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

Awesome! Thanks a bunch! :) :)

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

furthur questions:

• any real-world comparisons using insulated vs non-insulated (then heat shrinking)? I've heard our head mentor is pushing to non-insulated for reliability reasons, I'm wanting to use insulated cuz I like the color coding...
• mcmaster shows a "block" spade that is more square around the outside, allegedly keeps the terminal from rotating under the screw so much if the terminal is in a similarly shaped recess. Any real-world comparison?

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

Insulated connectors are much harder to properly crimp and verify that they are properly crimped.

In the automotive repair field we call the insulated crimp connectors job security since it is not a question of if they will fail but a question of when they will fail.

We only use insulated connectors as pictured for rapid prototyping they do not go on our actual robots due to too many failures in the past.

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

The colour coding is for the wire size, not circuit.

It would be important to use the block spade connector when you have high voltages and allowing the terminals to rotate may allow arcing from the end of the terminal where the wire goes in to an adjacent terminal.

Using a non-ratcheting crimper (www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=17996146) will guarantee inconsistent crimps with a significant percentage failing.

Use a "full-cycling" ratcheting crimper for a solid connection (www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0640160037/WM9986-ND/821379 Home Depot sells one for about half the price). We use ones like this at work to build industrial electrical equipment and make a couple of thousand crimps a day on insulated lugs with no problem. It is important to do a pull-test on each and every crimp. We also use air-powered, automated crimpers that feed the terminals off a reel. The ratcheting crimpers produce crimps of comparable quality.

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

We have had no issues with properly crimped insulated spade connectors and insulated fork connectors, using a non-racheted crimper.

We do occasionally crimp one improperly, and we replace it if that happens.

We also always zip tie the wire down near each connection so it can't wiggle or be stressed. If that is impossible we will loop the wires and zip tie them to each other so the connector is not stressed.

While it is true that they will fail in automotive applications, those are under significantly more vibration for significantly longer used lifetime than FRC robots. We measure our robots life in hours, not hundreds of thousands of miles.

We usually use only yellow and blue colors by wire gauge, since we don't use any wire smaller than 18awg. We have used red in the past for victor fans, but for anything that small it's probably a signal wire, which we will either solder or crimp in a PWM-style header.

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

If you need to attach the 14 gauge leads to the jags directly I recommend getting blue rings with a smaller #6 instead of a #8 hole. When picking crimp terminals always try to use the proper hole size for the screw to eliminate the posibility of the lug moving under the screw, and so there is max electrical contact.

Always avoid using such a large holed lug you need a washer too ::ouch::


It really isn't that hard to make a good crimp on an quality insulated crimp term, if your team is using those cheap stamped steel auto store multi tool crimpers consider getting a crimper like a Klein 1005 or a T&B WT112M. Stay away from cheap hardware and auto store crimps with vinyl insulation as they often are very thin in the rinf, fork, and in the barrel too and often do not have brazed seams in the barrel either.

In my work we reserve uninsulated terminals mostly for equipment grounding and high temperature terminatains in heaters and the like.

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

we went uninsulated. The student looked at it, thought the color coding wasn't a big deal, liked being able to do a visual on the crimp, and decided having to do a little heat shrink wasn't that much work (as long as they remember to put it on first!). Lead mentor had them using a good G&K non-ratcheting crimper; I'll have them try a ratcheting one tonight.

thanks, folks!

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

We crimp uninsulated, then follow with solder and finish with heatshrink. We have several of the crimpers that were provided in the KOP in the past.

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

solder doesn't make the wire brittle?

Re: Best terminal for drive motor crimping?
 

When soldering, we teach the students to only add enough solder to form a good connection with the terminal. Excessive heat and solder will cause the solder to migrate between the conductors and up under the insulation. When this occurs, vibration can lead to early failure of the wire at the point where wire is no longer flexible. An easy method is to only add solder to the wire end of the connection.