How should we crimp an SB120 to the 12AWG wire of a charger? I can get power poles for 6AWG wire but that will leave a large gap when crimping to the 12AWG wire of our NOCO charger. I am tempted to just fold the wire over but what is the correct method to make up for the size difference?
The correct way is by using a reducing bushing, but PowerWerx doesn’t sell any that are labeled specifically for the SB120. It might work to use a “SB50” labeled one with the 6 AWG contact for the SB120?
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Yup, what Peter said.
According to this datasheet from Anderson Power Products, they don’t make a reducing bushing specifically for the SB120 series (1319 (the 2AWG contact for SB120 housings)) that is designed to go down in size to 12AWG. However, you shouldn’t have any issues using a bushing (5910) designed for an SB50 6AWG contact (5900) in an SB120 6AWG contact (1319G6), as long as you keep in mind that the bushing will be slightly shorter than the depth of the contact.
This is also not a code/commercial/customer application, 6A is nothing, just fold and crimp. We’ve been doing so for years.
We do regularly break the wire where it goes into the crimp due to rough handling of the connector and wire… if you can protect that copper by bolting down the connector to your charging rack and strain relieving the wire with ziptie on the insulation jacket, the whole thing will last much longer. We’ve had sets that lasted weeks and sets that lasted years, and the difference has been the charging rack setup.
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Folding over is one of the correct methods of crimping a wire into a larger terminal. With a 12 into 6 you’ll probably need 4x but 3x may work as 12 into 6 isn’t on the chart you’ll find on page 6 of this document.
Or just solder it. On a charger, it should be fine if the connector is hard-mounted. I’m pretty sure AndyMark even solders on the crimps for the chargers they sell, or at least did at one point.
We left/put SB50 connectors on our chargers then made SB50 to SB120 adapters with 4 or 6awg wire.
It was easier to get the SB50s on the 12AWG/smaller wire and gave us charging compatibility with both SB50 and SB120.
The other thing we’ve done is solder them to the SB120.
You could also use several wraps of copper foil tape (the kind without adhesive, obviously) to make your own reducing bushing.
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