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Originally Posted by markopolo
The one I bought looks like this:
Booster's looks a bit more robust - no welds.
The screwdriver or very dull chisel method might work. I never thought to try that. It might be harder to do than it looks because you have to hold the lug. The one I bought locally is spring loaded. Same price as the one on Amazon.
I'm curious to know how to solder these big lugs & large gauge cables. I've tried but give up. Either not enough heat or too much and the insulation starts to melt.
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Ours says Molex on it, but looks like the one in the link. It is also spring loaded down to hold the lug in place.
I have done a lot of the chisel type crimps, usually very poorly, probably only good to get contact before soldering. The lugs need some side support to crimp well, it appears, and that, while holding everything is really tough with a chisel. There is also the issue of direction with the method shown in the link. The crimp is entirely along the axis of the lug, and with the outside not restrained, the center where you are beating it down, can go way down to the bottom of the lug, if there is enough room, leaving the only pressure to hold it together and contact in the area where the wires squirt out to the side. You really want crimps to pinch the wiring in the direction of the force to get good contact.
Best way I have found to solder big lugs is to rough crimp them to get contact for heat transfer, and then use a propane torch to heat just the end of the lug, no further in than the closest edge of the hole. I usually will put a bolt and nut through the hole, besides, to give more heat buffer and heat holding once you get to temperature. Doing it this way gives you lots of heat available and you can get the area where you put the torch hotter than if it were in an area you are going to solder, where it would burn the flux. It also does the best job of keeping as much heat as possible away from the insulation of the cable. You can also wrap the the cable just up from the lug with a damp cloth to help cool the insulation. Using small diameter solder, like the flux core electronic solder works best for me. What you never want to do is add solder before it is hot enough to flow by itself without hitting it with heat. With the small solder diameter, it will not have much heat capacity and melt very quickly if the lug is hot enough. Just touch the solder to the lug and it should melt and feed in very quickly with no extra heat being added. Having the cable set so the lug is slightly up is nice as gravity will help the solder go in past higher clearance spots in the joint.
Re: DC wiring - Best Practices
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