Great insight, knowledge and information Daniel. Thank you for sharing. I also totally agree!
Yours in Friendship and Flight, Dennis Steven Lacy On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, 10:36, Daniel Branstrom via KRnet <krnet@list.krnet.org> wrote: Years ago, i attended a seminar put on by Bob Nuckolls, who writes The AeroElectric Connection. He started out by taking a wire, crimping on a push-on connector, then connecting it to an item by pushing it on that had a little weight, then spinning it around by the wire. The push-on connector held. He went on to point out that the space shuttle and many other aerospace vehicles use them, and they work fine under heavy G-loads and vibration. Bob, if you're familiar with his career, worked for various airplane companies on electrical systems until he retired, and has a great deal of experience troubleshooting electrical problems for aerospace applications. There are some caveats to using crimp connectors. First, only get good quality connectors, and only the ones that both crimp to the wire as well as the insulation. Cheap connectors, (and I've used them in non-aeronautical, non-critical tasks) do not make good connections between male and female spade connectors. The cheap ones don't grip the male connector firmly and they only grip the wire itself. I've had some connectors pull apart as I moved the wire, they gripped that loosely. Subsequently, I took a pliers to the unconnected female connector and reshaped the "curls" that slide over the male connectors, so they gripped better. Needless to say, I'd never use a connector like that in an airplane. Good quality female spade connectors cut a groove into the male connector as they are pushed together, in essence, mating the two electrically as well as making a firm mechanical grip. Having crimp connectors that both crimp on the bare wire and the insulation provide mechanical support to the wire itself. Using the proper tool to make the connection is necessary. The good ones crimp the connector to both the bare wire and the insulation with a measured amount of force, then release. It is true that careless soldering can wick up stranded wire, stiffening it so that it breaks easily, but careful soldering avoids that. There is one other disadvantage to soldering, and for the great majority of connections, it is not a factor: solder introduces a tiny amount of resistance to the connection because it has higher resistance than copper. On a microscopic level, properly crimped copper wire is crushed to the point that electrically, it unites with the crimp connector: the wire and the connector are crushed to the point that they become one, with no resistance between them. The copper, stranded wire also becomes a single piece. Careful soldering makes good connections, but a good crimp connector that grips both the wire and the insulation is, IMO, is just as good, if not better. As for my soldering experience, as a teenager, nearly 60 years ago, I had a job soldering and unsoldering wires on a huge frame in a telephone exchange as a "frameman" for Pacific Bell. When someone moved, we had to connect the pairs of wires that came in on the trunk line to a different place. The wire frame I worked on was at least 50, if not 70' long. The job no longer exists. The building I worked in was the size of a small supermarket, but at least 3 stories tall, and used step switching for the phones. The size today of a new exchange that size for wired land lines is now the size of a garage, and changing the service from one place to another is simply done electronically. -- KRnet mailing list KRnet@list.krnet.org https://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet
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