Alternatives to those pre insulated butt joints

Shrink rapped , soldrerd joints are viewed as a better option in damp or wet enviorements or where the other conductor is uninsulated (i.e the car body engine etc) or in a situation where the cables are of a sinificantly differing size

whether its true or not i wouldnt know but every time i have had alarm or communications kit installed this is the answer most engineers come up with

I think that's because some solder moves up the strands by capillary action. It stiffens the wire but doesn't add any strength.

You do if you want to understand why a statement like "A properly crimped terminal is shaped round the conductor" is absolute rubbish.

Indeed. However, as I stated earlier, the environment I was working in was very similar to that fond in a car WRT vibration, termination strain and contamination.

Are you saying you have never seen a car loom which has in-line soldered or crimped connections done by the manufacturer?

If so, this suggests that you have not looked at the wiring of many cars...

Go browse the RS website. Search for MIL crimp. You will find that many Tyco pre-insulated, *multi-sized* Tyco crimp products do indeed meet a MIL specification.

Lots. Some good, some bad. Just like all work I look at done by the motor trade...

I've used exactly those terminals, with exactly that sized flex, perfectly satisfactorily on many, many occasions. It's a common cable size for industrial sensors, of which I've wired more than I like to remember.

If a terminal is fitted to the correct size wire, with the proper tooling, it can't pull out. It is cold welded to the terminal. That is the principle of crimp tooling.

It may have happened to you. I've used them for something like 40 years, and it hasn't to me...

Chris

If you take the mcb or the rcbo apart then there's normally a flex soldered to the arc arrester:-)

As I've said before the only solder joints I've come across on car looms are where several wires are joined together then extended with one - like grouping earths. Any one to one cable joint always uses a crimped connector.;

Hmm. I suspect what's really happening is that the curvature is greatest just beside the soldered joint, so the bending strain is greatest there. If you stick a bar of copper in a vice and move the free end to and fro it will almost certainly break just beside the vice, for exactly the same reason.

Ian

Why not? If there isn't much in it, performance-wise, ease of construction may well be the deciding factor.

Ian

But if you do the same test with a crimped connector you'll likely give up before it breaks - the difference is so great. This refers to the standard car type crimped connector where the core and insulation crimp are close together - ie all. If the insulation crimp were a inch or so away from the soldered joint it probably would be ok - but they're not.

But there is a lot in it - most inside a computer don't have terribly effective strain reliefs as they're not much needed. But would be with soldered joints.

No only that, you can change the laws of chemistry and physics according to how closely and how often that _you_ personally have looked at them. Now that's impressive!