We were wondering which electrical connectors would be better for our wiring - anderson power poles or wagos. If someone could help us on this it would be great
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Both are great options!
Andersons are better if you want to put everything in big blocks, or want to tie them down easier. They do require more work to be properly made however. You can also use them to higher gauges standard, they can accept (depending on the amperage you chose for the contact), anywhere from 22 to 10 gauge wire
Wagos are great if you dont want to work as much to get the wires made, however do be aware they can apparently only accept up to 12 gauge wire, although you can probably get other ones that accept higher.
But tldr both are great options, but we use andersons.
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We use both. Andersons for main power wires for motors and wagos for CAN and small gage wire like encoders, beam breaks, etc. Both have their place.
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Pretty much agree with the others. If you want a connector for 10 to 16 AWG, Anderson PP are awesome, provided you get the TriCrimp or better tool and a decent pair of wire strippers, and spend some time and effort getting the connections right. It’s not trivial, but well within the average FRC student’s capability.
For 18 AWG and smaller, there are so many good options, I’ll just advise you stay away from JST and Dupont connectors whenever you can (one doesn’t lock and the other doesn’t unlock), and if you use a crimp system, buy decent tools. And buy a decent wire stripper and strip the right amount, whatever you use! I don’t have much experience with wago connectors on my own projects, but many teams use them, and the only problems I’ve seen inspecting were when a team [I remember the event, year, and team] used too-small a connectors for their drive engines and some melted, which is better than I can say about any other small gauge connector.
Our team personally uses wagos for everything, but we did use Anderson. We never had a problem but just like the ease of use for wagos.
We’ve used off-brand WAGOs as well as Andersons in the past. In our experience, when Andersons are done right (which takes quite a bit of training), they are more reliable and easier to work with during subsystem swaps than WAGOs.
My team uses andersons for power and wagos for CAN. We also solder our swerve module can wires together since those have been a problem point in the past.
EDIT: If you do andersons, make sure you make sure the connectors won’t come unplugged from each other. My team does this by just wrapping a ziptie between the wires on both connectors which secures it.
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The wago that goes up to 10AWG is model 221-621, the in-line(model 221-2401) is good for 18-12AWG.
Posi-Lock - The Connector of Choice for OEM & Military Use are something to try out as well.
I recommend always using APPs. The only time we use wagos is during pre-season bot building or for temporary connections to show which wires need to be soldered together. Wagos are just more unreliable because the wires are more likely to come out versus APP.
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