Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

This Talon came off of our 2013 robot. We got in a habit of unplugging the wires to the talons that controlled our climbing arm. I'm not sure the entire story behind it, but the power wires were reconnected with reversed polarity and poof. White smoke in downtown Flint.

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

In the future, every city will have 4 buildings that look like terminal screws

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

Has anyone found a keyed connector that can take 12 gauge wire?

My thought was to mount pigtails on the talons and use two different keyed connectors to help prevent this (happened twice to us).

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

You can do this with the small Anderson Powerpoles. If you take a close look at the housings, you'll note that rather than mounting them side by side, you can attach them together with one of the two rotated 90 degrees. If you do that consistently, you've effectively made a keyed connector.

I've generally found that enforcing color coding and having an experienced second set of eyes check wiring before conducting smoke tests is good enough, but it's an option.

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

Thank You. That is exactly what I was looking for.

Re: pic: Someone tell me what THIS is!
 

Be sure to do a search for powerpoles here for more hints on their use. We have finally managed to get most of our motors and control components involved in using these, but it is still possible to put a ring terminal on the wrong post and/or a bare wire-end into the wrong Wago hole on the PDB. It would help if more attention is paid to color correspondence. Our talons have red tape next to the sides at which red wires should be connected, for instance.