I meant unfounded as in excessive concern. I can definitely see where they would be worried esp w/ terminations or anything exposed in that type of environment- apparently for cost sake, the bean counters realized there are effective ways of accommodating this less expensive conductor- specs are everything until somebody makes an informed decision and decides they won't pay for them.
As for swaged vs. sc, I think a lot of it has to do w/ the initial installation- a huge problem w/ al is improper torquing as Peter d mentioned above- often the connection is doomed from day one and will eventually fail b/c someone decided to "flatten" instead of merely terminate.
that's the thing about swaged terminations. it's as close to a manufactured device as
you can get in the field. you're using a die made for that specific application, and
applying 12 tons of pressure to form it into one piece. you can also exclude moisture
with heat shrink, so it won't oxidize and corrode.
of course set screw lugs are listed AL9CU, and will work fine, yada.... however, i've
never seen a hypressed lug fail in the lug to cable join, and i can't say that for
setscrew connections.
to answer the other question, the reason i use pin terminations, is that my inspector
had issues with changing out the factory lugs on the panel. so, i used pins, and torqued
them with a torque wrench.
