Quote:
Originally Posted by Chadfrom308
We used to have ratcheting crimpers but somehow we lost them. Which is sad because they were always my favorite and worked like 100% of the time. 
Anyways, when we crimp terminals, this is the method we use
1. Normally strip the insulators
2. Get heat shrink
3. Strip wire, put it in the terminal
4. Crimp it as much as you can
5. Put as much solder as you can possibly fit, you can never have too much
6. Heat shrink it (makes it look nice and insulates)
7. Pull-test it
That works for us, and we notice when we don't solder, even with a pull test, they just randomly fall out for no reason.
Hope that helps  |
You can definitely have too much solder. It will wick into the wire and cause stress problems in the wire.
If you're wires are falling out using just crimp connections, it is not "for no reason," it is most likely because the crimp was not done properly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes20xxx
My main problem with ratcheting crimpers is that at robotics we tend to have 5 different brands of crimps, all different O.D.. In this case, adjusting your ratcheting crimper to properly crimps will not work on the other brand.
Basically - do a tug test, if it pops off, redo it.
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Why do you not standardize the brand/style of crimp connector? Having five different brands kicking around is just asking for problems.
A by-hand tug test (what I assume you're talking about as I assume you don't have a real tug-test machine) does not generally result in any meaningful amount of force, as mentioned earlier. I tried a number of 'by hand' pull tests last night (putting the fitting in a vise and pulling on the wire). Results were bad, either I couldn't get a lot of force on the wire for various mechanical advantage reasons, or the wire cut into my hand quite painfully. The only meaningful test I devised with basic shop tools is described above.
Edit: that's a round-about way of saying that if a hand tug-test is causing the crimp to fail there is something
very wrong in the crimping procedure that you're using. The only crimps that failed a hand tug test during my experimenting last night were ones that I accidentally made with the crimping tool facing
backwards, a very serious procedure issue indeed!