Searching options for new wire connectors

Technical Electrical
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We are currently using the XT series (XT,30,60,90) and we want to try and explore new and different connectors, does anyone has any recommendations?
The ones in use on your teams, ones you have experience with etc.
It’ll help us a lot and we would appreciate it.

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Molex SL / Ditto is pretty common for signal, CAN, and low current power wires. Andersons are common for motors and high current power wires. Many people also just choose to use WAGO lever nuts for everything.

We tried using XT connectors but discovered they need to be soldered perfectly every single time or else they can absolutely fail. We switched to WAGO lever nuts for everything because it is just so easy.

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Thanks for your answer, appreciate it.

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Two things.

  1. If you choose to go with the Ditto connectors make sure you get the positive locking ones (friction lock comes out really easily idk why we didn’t get those to begin with)

  2. Does anyone know if the $400 Molex SL crimper also works with the contacts for the Ditto connectors? I’m assuming it does since the contacts are similar style but I also don’t want to buy a $400 on an assumption.

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Almost certainly not. The official crimping tools are custom designed to work with specific families. The one above’s scope does not list the Ditto terminal series (150200 per this document). This crimper is described as the Ditto hand crimp tool for 20-22 AWG and the datasheet indeed indicates support for the 150200 terminals.

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Oh bet this ones $500!!

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This is the way.
You might also consider zip-tie strain reliefs to make doubly sure the wires won’t pull out of the connector.

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For Motor/High Current/Power circuits I love Anderson PowerPole Connectors. They can be very reliable if crimped correctly with a quality crimper (like the tri-crimp). Also love that you can get all kinds of colored housings for the PowerPole crimps to match your wires. Though mostly I just get white in addition to the classic red and black so we have a third color for NEO motor connectors.

For CAN I have experimented with a couple solutions with teams 3468 and 9153. The goal being a CAN Bus where we can quickly and easily remove/swap any client device (ie motor controllers, CANcoders, etc.) without disconnecting the bus. In this effort, I have settled on using a “Bus and branch” topology where there is the central “ring”/line/bus from the master to terminator devices and a branch along the path for each additional device. Now, you will hear some complain about this topology because of increased risks of signal reflections and such, but the truth is that at the 1Mbps speeds our buses operate at, this is fine as long as your “branches” are relatively short (under 1ft/30cm), and if you do start running into CAN Utilization issues you don’t believe are code-based, first thing to do is shorten those branches, which doesn’t compromise the bus anyway.

The current method I used with 3468 and 9153 last year and continuing with 9153 currently are these knock-off lever-nut connectors that give you a “2 in 4 out” connection. The “2 in” side going to the CAN Device, and the main bus/loop/ring going through the “4 out” side. You can then just lift the levers on the “2 in” side to remove the device, leaving the connector and maintaining the bus. Downsides we have seen are mainly issues with students not stripping enough insulation, or otherwise closing the levers on insulation, leading to issues with the bus that can take some time to diagnose. However my plan is simply better training this year to reduce that probability.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087P2XFN1/

The previous solution I tested for 2 years on team 3468 were these “splice on” T-branch connections paired with similar splice-on quick-disconnects. The benefit, that I still like over the above solution, being that the main bus/loop can be one single continuous unbroken set of wire, meaning your chances of losing the main bus is very, very low. The downsides were that the points of failure for a device were so much higher since you were relying on 8 splices per device connection, any one of which being bad would prevent the device from operating. Paired with issues from these connectors being very picky about which wire they’d work well with (avoid anything with very thick or silicone insulation) and while we never had a failure in a match, when installing the splices we had a few cases of the latches that hold tension on the splice breaking which if occurred during a match would likely lead to a splice falling off. Overall I’d still trust it, but just feel better with the lever nuts since diagnosis and fixing an issue is much quicker and easier.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07114RK67/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081JG4KR5/

Edit: Oh yeah, if you DO want to go with the splice-on connectors, this is the wire we found that worked great with it for the main bus/loop. I will also add we never had issue with the wire used on the Talon SRX/VIctor SPX or SparkMax controllers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB3U6H0/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB3SV6S/

Edit 2: Another connector we used last year on 3468 for CAN were these 4-device CANstar Drops. We used these on our Swerve Modules to clean up the wiring and allow for easier swapping out if a module had needed to be swapped at a competition.

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Wago with ferrules. The ferrules not only prevent the clamping on insulation, but also are a MUCH stronger connection. A simple pull test using bare wires and Wago’s vs ferrules and Wago’s will remove any doubt.

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My team uses:

All of these can be easily, and securely crimped with inexpensive tools and offer solid connections when used properly. MOLEX locking connectors are appealing for smaller wires too, but the expensive tools (that you absolutely need to get a good crimp) are a bit of a dealbreaker for most.

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I honestly prefer the Andersons. Even though they’re more work in the beginning, they give way for more organization if you have a mechanism that uses several motors. Specifically with swerve modules and transmissions, I feel like it makes swaps a bit faster. But man do I love how easy WAGO lever nuts are. Really hope they adopt the locking mechanism that Andersons have.

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We are getting away from ferrules because we had too many pull out last year and it just gives you an extra failure point. It didn’t help that we had all freshmen and 1 senior on our build team last year, covid hit us hard and we felt it big time

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We are using a good quality hex ferrule crimper ($30-$70). And yes you can pull the wires out of a ferrule. But the effort required to remove wires from the ferrule vs remove wire directly from the Wago is huge. IMHO, if you are experiencing enough force to remove the wire from a properly crimped ferrule, you aren’t going to stop that motor/gear/wheel thingy turned into a WINCH from breaking the wire. Please note, for all wires supplying power to motors we use Anderson connectors.

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We have a new good crimper but the kids liked using the old one better for whatever reason

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We’ve started using some of these connectors for smaller gauge connections, like the CAN bus.
Simple to use, no need to strip the wire, just cut the wire, push it into the connector, smash the connector closed using a pair of pliers. The connector cuts through the insulation and makes contact with the conductors when you close it. There is both a straight and T version available.

https://a.co/d/ac6JPE5
https://a.co/d/gqQbv0F

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I used to use XT60s for everything But I switched back to Anderson’s this year

I learned how to properly crimp, bought good GXL wire, and got some actually good crimpers. The advantage is they’re very quick to install and if done right, are extremely strong

Good wire, good crimpers. All that’s needed

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