On Dec 12, 11:04 am, jcarlyle wrote:
On Dec 12, 11:51 am, ContestID67 wrote:

- Solder - Is to be avoided in liu of crimp connectors. However,
sometimes you just can't avoid it.

Why do you make this statement, John? I've dealt with tens of
thousands of cables professionally for over 35 years, and during that
experience I've found that if a connection is crimped, it's crap. By
that I mean it's highly likely to be either electrically noisy or
mechanically weak.

I did a Google search, and basically discovered that crimping vs
soldering discussions are, in some quarters, a quasi-religious war. I
don't want to add fuel to that fire, but are there authoritative,
unbiased studies (eg, not from connector manufacturers) that bear out
your assertion?

-John

I'm not sure what sort of cable you are talking about. Some cables
e.g. professional audio cables are probably going to fail regardless
of how they are done just form the handling they get. Similarly I've
spent many hours repairing RF and microwave coax cables in research
labs and I'm sure most failere are from gross abuse (peopel pulling on
the cables etc.) and these have had all times of connections,
soldered, crimped, spot welded, exotic super conducting connections,
etc. For my money in my glider I'll take properly done crimp
connections.

There are quite a few research papers that demonstrate superiority of
crimp connectors in production environments - ie. where both solder
joints and crimp connections are performed properly. Even with good
control and technique solder suffers from dry joints and surface
contaminatation issues amongst others and in general take a lot more
skill to do properly than an equivalent crimp joint. Most of the
papers I recall are in IEEE publications not from vendors, if you are
an IEEE member or have access to their publications I'll try to find
them for you. Crimping may be faster and lower cost in production
environments but automotive and aerospace company also do not want to
pay for the cost of failed connections in the field - if soldering was
superior you would see it being used more in these applications.

It seems many people's experience with crimp connectors is using some
no brand PVC jacketed connector from the local hardware or auto parts
store with a cheap single action crimp tool. All bets are off if that
is the case.

Getting back to the original request, there are some interesting
articles on general aviation wiring etc. at http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles.html
I've not looked through them all but some seem to have a good
perspective from a professional A&P who does this stuff for a living.
He seems to have lots of practical examples of good tools and
workmanship, eg. -

http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles...rimptools.html
http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles.../shldwire.html
http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/bnccrimp.pdf

Cheers


Darryl Ramm