SLU-70 Lugs

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by BrianBSL

Although at first I was not a fan of these - they are a large improvement over what most teams were using in the past, particularly now that FIRST no longer includes a crimping tool truly capable of crimping 6 gauge connectors in the kit. I'm pretty picky about electrical connections, and every non-signal connection on our robot is crimped then soldered and heatshrinked, including the SLU-70's. We also put a little bit of solder into the setscrew of the lug to add something to prevent it from loosening. Solder isn't really good at doing mechanical things, but its an improvement over just leaving it. All of this, of course, requires that you have a soldering iron capable of heating up the copper connector and 6 gauge wire.

An important point that you missed is "Strain Relief". That is, tie wrap your wires to a piece of the frame near the SLU70 so that part of the #6 wire will not move. This is the biggest problem with any mechanical connect, and it can be solved so easily. I'm trying to find a lug with strain relief to solve all of out problems.