Anderson and crimping

[Half-Pint]

These threads are a bit of a laugh, every few months someone asks what the best way to connect Anderson plugs and various people answer with what they do. The risks of various MacGyver methods are put out by those in the know, guys who work in safety critical industries where true "best practice" has been established. Then a good couple of generous people step forward and say anyone is welcome to use my tools to crimp things correctly and still people will turn around and say "Naaa, I just let my pit bull bite the crimps and I've been doing that for years and I've never even burnt down one of my cars, you guys are morons"(insert your chosen back yard method here).

One can see why some experts no longer contribute to these threads.

[iandvl]

The problem with soldering is that the hot lead leaches up to 5mm or even more into the electrical lead (wire) making it very "brittle" and not able to bend excessively. This is prone to happening when connecting and disconnecting the plug.

Before you know it, it breaks off. The same eeeveeentually happens to copper wire, so a lead with many thinner, more flexible pure copper wire forms a longer lasting lead than one with fewer thicker strands.

Soldered lead (mixed with soldering resin) does not like bending at all.....

At issue here is that any form of metal does not like bending, so use the versions of it that will remain intact the longest, which is crimping a lead with more and thinner (up to a point, too thin is also no good) wire strands.

I took a break from the forum for a few days because I had stuff to do and I was a little annoyed.

What Malcolm says is 100% true.

You can have a hundred fuses in your truck.

But a fused short circuit is not what causes fires because the fuse blows.

A hot joint (ie: a connection which is connecting intermittently) is where the problem comes in. That causes fires.**

I stand by my earlier comment. If you want to crimp lugs and are in Pretoria, please stop by and I'll crimp them for you. For free. Or give me beer.

Edit: **This is where soldering thick (or thin) cables becomes a risk. As pointed out by Malcolm.

[grips]

This is a repeat of an older thread. As pointed out in the previous thread you get different terminal sizes for the Anderson plugs. The 50A Anderson does have three sizes. Unfortunately a little confusing because they are in American Wire Gauge standard and not SA wire gauge sizes. EDG stock them AWG no stamped on terminal.
You also get an Anderson Cable Clamp kit for their plugs.

https://www.andersonpower.com/us/en/...clamp-kit.html


6AWG = 13.3mm² to Metric in SA Cable sizes +- 10mm²

8AWG = 8.4mm² to Metric in SA Cable sizes +- 6mm²

10/12AWG = 3.3mm²/5.3mm² to Metric in SA Cable sizes +- 2.5 mm²

Please note I have quoted plus minus cause the AWG sizes does have sizes in between that does not relate to our cable size.

I have done numerous projects with cables up to 66kV. All cable termination standards spec crimp joints or torque shear Lugs and Ferrules. No crimp joint should be an effort to crimp provided you use the correct crimper.
There are only one cable connector that needed to be soldered and that were the old High Voltage Resin terminations.

[hatjohan]

https://www.andersonpower.com/conten...018/1s6603.pdf

[Alan Exton]

When you Plug In or plug out an Anderson Plug that is soldered or crimped, do so carefully and responsibly and the joint will not fail you. It depends on the user if the plug will fail or not. Don't blame the crimp or the solder joint.