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Unread 29-12-2014, 11:11
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Joe Johnson Joe Johnson is offline
Engineer at Medrobotics
AKA: Dr. Joe
FRC #0088 (TJ2)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: May 2001
Rookie Year: 1996
Location: Raynham, MA
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Re: Anderson Power Pole for motors

I think they are without peer for FRC applications.

I highly recommend the official crimp tool from Anderson as have others. I will add that you need a variety of terminals (15A, 30A, & 45A) to suit different gauge wires that you want to crimp to.

Other best practices:
Tie wrap the connections together to prevent accidental unplugging.

Use different colors on the battery side of the speed controller/spike (e.g. red/black) than on the motor side (e.g. white/blue).

Make a Gold Master bit of wire that you can use to keep your polarity consistent when you make connections. You will be switching things around an you don't want to burn up a Victor or have a motor run backwards.

Make a special tool from a cheap pliars that will let you separate housings. I will post a picture of this when I get back to Boston but it is basically it involves grinding away half of each leg of the pliars. This tool lets you split the two housings easily, which can be a real pain (a literal pain actually) to do, especially if you're in a hurry.

Dr. Joe J.
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