New AM Shrink Tube Solder

[ahartnet]

Originally Posted by electroken

They do require a lot of heat to melt the solder cylinder within, much more than most wire insulation can tolerate, so some care is needed to avoid damaging the wire insulation.

I've used them at my day job (NASA). They definitely do require more heat than many other things that require a heat gun.

My use cases have been when we need to solder a wire to a braided shield (surrounding the wires). I do not know if that is the main purpose of them or not, but soldering a wire to a shield can be either tricky or difficult to provide a strong mechanical connection.

I agree with the other sentiments expressed here - if it is able to help those teams that may not have someone to teach them how to solder - great! Do I think this is particularly helpful in FRC (as opposed to butt splices, levernuts, andersons, or soldering) - eh I won't be pushing to move to these instead, but I won't deem it a poor decision by those that do.

This is what I see:
-Advantage over levernuts: cheaper
-Advantage over butt splices: stronger connection and more obvious that it's completed (crimping done by inexperienced people are likely to either crimp the wrong place, or not crimp hard enough). It is obvious (and like bilfred said - satisfying - to see the solder melt
-Advantage over Andersons: cheaper (probably, I haven't confirmed), more permanent, and same crimp issues noted before
-advantage over soldering: probably quicker, requires less experience

-disadvantage over levernuts: takes longer, requires more tools than a wire stripper (or sharp edge), requires electrical power (or battery powered heat gun)
-disadvantage over butt splices: more expensive, requires electrical power (or battery powered heat gun)
-disadvantage over andersons: can't disconnect
-disadvantage over soldering: more expensive, requires a decent check of wire on both ends (i.e. - there are some situations you can only solder to connect wires)