Anderson Power Pole for motors

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

...
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.

...

Dr. Joe J.

One of the great things about power poles is that they don't accidentally unplug. The connectors are angled towards each other so that the spring in the contact holds the connector on, not friction. If you get enough force to unplug a power pole connector, I'd rather have it disconnect than start ripping crimp connections or components apart.

What's the advantage of mis-matched colors? We used all red-black last year, matching the wires. We were thinking of using the colors as labels, but we would have used the same color housing on both sides to ensure we made the correct connection, saving some sticky labels. The biggest reason we didn't do this is it would require that we re-terminate a motor to use it in a different location on the robot; last year we had generic spares with connectors pre-crimped, and just had to add a label.

Also, power poles make their own polarity enforcer. Just orient all of the poles the same direction, and there's only one way to connect the equivalent mate. In order to make them non-polarity-enforcing, you'd have to make a shape with 180-degree rotational symmetry. All of these 2-pole shapes I can find would require that you connect two tongues or two grooves together.

[nixiebunny]

We were considering using the Anderson connectors for motors, but thought about other possibilities. We came up with the XT60 connector that Hobbyking and other RC companies sell for connecting those high-current LiPo battery packs to quadcopters. Low cost, simple solder connection, keyed for polarity protection.

We bought a few bags of thee, and will see how they do.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...arehouse_.html

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by nixiebunny

We were considering using the Anderson connectors for motors, but thought about other possibilities. We came up with the XT60 connector that Hobbyking and other RC companies sell for connecting those high-current LiPo battery packs to quadcopters. Low cost, simple solder connection, keyed for polarity protection.

We bought a few bags of thee, and will see how they do.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...arehouse_.html

They're not insanely cheaper than andersons, and require soldering so they take far more time.

[billbo911]

To apply XT60s properly, you need to also use heat shrink, or electrical tape, to cover the back side of the terminals. That is not required with the Anderson connectors.

[GeeTwo]

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).

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

What's the advantage of mis-matched colors? We used all red-black last year, matching the wires. We were thinking of using the colors as labels, but we would have used the same color housing on both sides to ensure we made the correct connection, saving some sticky labels. The biggest reason we didn't do this is it would require that we re-terminate a motor to use it in a different location on the robot; last year we had generic spares with connectors pre-crimped, and just had to add a label.

In re-reading, I've answered my own question. The point here is not to have the connectors between the PDB and the controller look like the ones between the controller and the motor. That never occurred to me as a problem, because we never use connectors between the PDB and the controller. Except for Ultimate Ascent, where we were jamming too many features into too small a space, we've managed to put the PDB and all of the motor controllers on the same control board, and run these wires directly. Another important thing to remember about connectors of any type is to remember that they are inherently a compromise - giving up some of the reliability of a continuous connection for the sake of maintainability, flexibility, or convenience.

GO TEAMS!

[StephenNutt]

Our team purchased a shrink tubbing label printer for this year. Hopefully all wires will now be clearly marked to simplify tracing and reduce the chance of a connector being plugged into the wrong connector.

How many connectors do you typically have on a robot? I believe we generally only have 1 per motor.

Steve