K8 - There is no question in my mind you are competent, knowledgeable and a good guy. The following comments are offered with all due respect.
And I strongly feel there is no reason to make a poorly crimped connection. That's from decades of experience.
How about being in the middle of nowhere, not expecting to have to deal with a certain size connection, and having no time to get one. I guess one would have to do work on payloaders broke down in blizzards to get the real feel for that. There is a porta-sol and solder in my connector case. I haven't had to use it in a while, but it's sure nice to have from time to time.
That's great. Not to mention - could you stop the solder from wicking up the #22 wire and causing a stress cracking suceptable area? Doesn't matter, this doesn't have anything to do with reliability of a properly crimped or properly soldered connection.
Yes. With proper surface prepping, proper temp and good control, solder can be placed on the connector end and stopped before it slips into the conductor. Most people use too much solder and too high of temp for this to work.
Last time I did that, I used silver solder - floride flux (as I recall). I don't recall any tendency for failure. Can't say I have ever tried this with Lead/Tin. Still, SAA
It can be done with good PbTn solder. The surface prepping takes some time, so I basically only fool with it on a bet or just to show off. I also have various chemmies to do surface prep with. My favorite is AG FluxAll. It's oxalic acid, basically. Nasty stuff, but removes oxidation by chemical reaction and is what I use on badly corroded wires.
Some Grayback stoking a boiler to power his steam driven radio transmitter. :roll: Just teasing - not whipping. There will always be a place for morse operators and packet radio as well
Actually, the sender was Chip Margelli, the V.P. of Marketing for Heil Sound, the folks that make Heil mikes that rock and roll stars use.
In May 2005, Margelli and partner Ken Miller, K6CTW, enjoyed their "15 minutes of Amateur Radio fame" with an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC. Using Morse code, the two radio amateurs went head to head with US cell-phone text messaging champ Ben Cook and his partner to see which mode would get the message through in the shortest time. Margelli, Miller and Morse won hands down.
As for being a Grayback:
Margelli holds both bachelor's and master's degrees (political science and business administration, respectively) from the University of Washington. He speaks fluent Japanese.
He used to work for the radio company Yaesu. I think they make radios for airplanes. They are a popular brand of amateur radio. High quality stuff.
Seriously, technology has moved on since I got started in the mid-1960.
I really like my turbo-diesel pickup a lot better than the 56 Crown Vic I was driving in high school.
My house burns half the heatng fuel of the one I grew up in.
Yes, I taught my kid how to clean and solder the magnet wire leads coming out of the hand-crank generator he wound for science fair.
Crimped lug connections have generally supplanted soldered lug connections. One would be hard pressed to find a soldered lug connection on any airplane built in the last 30 years.
And yes, I have spent a lot of time replacing improperly crimped cheap lugs - but I did it with properly crimped good lugs.
You might considered reading the article I posted and maybe even look at the AeroElectric website articles on connections. It is pretty interesting. And this guy does have his documentation
I don't expect to convince you otherwise. You have 40+ years developing your process. I do respect that. I also don't see any reason to saddle anyone with 1960s technology.
ice
I did breeze through it. Once I saw there seemed to be no mention of proper temps and surface prepping I kind of lost interest.
Soldering is not 1960's technology. More like 1860's. Well, 1890's, anyway.
An EC I have worked for in the past is a friend of mine. I could just see the steam coming from his ears if he saw me soldering terminals on wires working on a job he had. I know better than to even suggest it unless there was a valid reason. A good soldered connection may take several minutes as opposed to several seconds to slam a crimp on.
However, when I do work on his equipment and toys, it's all soldered and shrunk. I even have different colors of shrink tube to match any decor or conductor color.
You are correct about there being no soldered connections on aircraft. Same for cars. But they are machine crimps, set and calibrated. I haven't looked in a new airplane lately, but I do know what is in cars. In cars, there is NEVER a crimp done under insulation. It's metal to metal. The insulation is part of the connector and installed after crimping.
Oh, and while we are on this subject......
Back in the 80's Buick came up with the bright idea to bury the headlight controller under the dash, requiring the entire dash (9 hour job) to be removed when working on them. The controller shuttled power to the headlights via a 1/4" spade terminal (factory crimped) and I saw a half dozen of them fail, leaving the customer in the dark, literally. The failure damaged both the control board and connector. That was about 200 bucks worth of parts. I made the repairs using solder and never heard of a failure. Buick only did that for a year or two.
