Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Wilks
We only use solder for small joints on the bot such as sensors. Why would any medium or large joints be anything other than crimped?
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Jim,
We solder all joints. Not that they need it but we lost a World Championship to Beatty a long time ago because one of our crimps let go. We even solder the battery terminals.
There is an interesting NASA study done on lead free solders, printed a few years back. They found that the lead free grows conductive crystals with time and eventually short out adjacent circuitry on printed circuit boards. I have been careful to watch for that in my day job and have found hundreds of failed joints and shorted traces over the years. But lead solder also has failures, most often in temperature control. I just replaced a main relay in my daughter's Honda for defective joints.
The most important piece of advice I can give is have someone assigned to pay attention to the batteries. You cannot imagine how many teams end up saying "I thought you were charging the batteries..." - RoboMom [more] 
19-08-2013, 10:02
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