Issue with solder is can make the cable brittle near the lugs, which can cause some or all of the strands to break, as well as damage the insulation.

My **opinion** on solder is that if the connection is not strong enough without solder, then adding the solder is a band-aid. From my experience, over time if the connection heats up, the solder can melt, increasing the resistance therefore creating more heat leading to total failure... I used to believe strongly in soldering terminals, that is, until I had one fail from the solder melting out of the terminal. It was a poor crimp to start with, and the solder was exactly as I said; a band-aid. There are loads of options when it comes to making cables like this, but at the end of the day, the critical thing in any case is to make sure the crimping itself is done right, anything else on top of that is just icing on the cake. While Icing can make a good cake better, it can't change a dried out piece of cardboard into a tiramisu. Hydraulic crimpers are the way to go!!

I designed backup battery systems for telecom in a past life, and wired up more than a few test systems in the lab.. Solder or crimp depends what the application is.. Yes, if you are after the ultimate in conductivity, solder is the way to go, but for parts subject to flexure and vibration, solder can wick into the strands past the crimp and the wire will eventually break just past the lug. In such cases, you have two choices: you can use mechanical crimp connections only and oversize the lug and conductor to handle the current, or you use specially designed lugs that you first crimp and apply a carefully controlled amount of solder to a port in the "closed" end of the lug (or we had special order lugs that came with a small controlled amount of solder paste deposited in the lug). In this case, the crimp being done first is critical as it mechanically seals the lug (and a proper crimp is hermetic- we cut apart a lot of crimps to come up with specs and tooling for making the crimps) and the wire and prevents wicking of the solder into the wire past the lug, but just bonded the surface and ends of the wire, which we found to be indistinguishable in performance to fully tinned wire ends. Now this worked great for pre-made cables, but out in the field, the techs much preferred the crimp only lugs- those thick heavy cables and lugs are basically big chunks of copper and take a lot of heat and are difficult to do precisely in the field. Properly engineered, you can account for the minor differences in conductivity, and ease of installation is quite often the overriding design requirement.

In both automotive and aircraft, solder joints in wire are a no-no. Many service manuals have large bold warnings never to solder wiring. Like @flyingodismount says, it somewhat depends on applications, but generally mechanical crimps are more reliable than solder. There was a study about this a while back and it showed that a proper mechanical crimp using a hydraulic tool will "cold weld" copper to the terminal. I'd link to the study, but I've never been able to find it on the inter-webs.....

In marine applications solder joints are forbidden and in most jurisdictions residential and industrial power circuits, soldered joints and lugs are not code. The reasoning is that if the conductor is overloaded, the solder would begin to flow and the juncture would overheat catastrophically. In marine environments the dissimilar metals of the solder lead/tin/zinc to the copper just adds more issues. MerCruiser used this in the past and I’ve had the displeasure of redoing a few wiring harnesses. Best is a quality lug, quality fine strand tined wire, quality crimp, adhesive lined heat shrink tube. Done right and it’ll outlast you in most environments.

They carry a ton of power! When I get a second Sol Ark I need to upgrade my 300 amp fuses to probably 500 amps

Thank you so much!!!

Glad you liked it!

AWG chart AWG # Diameter (inch) Diameter (mm) Area (kcmil) Area (mm2) 0000 (4/0) 0.4600 11.6840 211.6000 107.2193 000 (3/0) 0.4096 10.4049 167.8064 85.0288 Must of got a good crimp connection then.

Are you happy with the hydraulic crimper? I just ordered one, I like the 1/2 sizes so you have some leeway for different thicknesses of copper lugs

@@stovepipe9er Yes, still happy with the TEMCo hydraulic crimper.

@@jimegan7077 excellent, thanks for letting me know

@@stovepipe9er I have the same crimper. works great

Isn't Burndy Penetrox A for assemblies in which one or more of the elements is aluminum? I don't see a recommendation from Burndy to use Penetrox on copper-copper assemblies . . . but I didn't look everywhere.

The thing is pretty awesome I will admit

Lugs are tinned (solder coated) in many cases so you're just removing the solder. Silver based solder is 5% more conductive than copper.

@@aday1637 I also do not get new ones often. I have an old box of lugs all different sizes.

Great idea for older lugs! Luckily for me, these were brand new.

I went back into the shop and took a look at where I cut, it was actually on one of the crimp lines, the 1/8" kerf of the blade cut off half of the crimp....It wasn't much tighter at all, it had about the same amount of air gaps on it. I like the 6 point crimp much more.

Quite possibly!!

i am pretty sure all the big companies share info, buy something on amazon then youtube starts recommending videos related.

No, the stands are still distinguishable, just very tightly packed

Email me at info@currentconnected.com

I recommend 1” diameter

Ancor has the best wire out there. Its highest quality marine grade wire. Each individual strand is tinned, and its VERY flexible.

To keep things nicely sealed and to prevent any corrosion getting to the copper especially if you're using them with lead acid batteries

@@HighTechLab Thanks cobba. I reckon heat shrink can also dampen vibrations and help preserve the join by preventing conductor strands from fracturing. I think you need to view this guy's video, he says, nearer the end of his video, that heat shrink is only for cosmetic purposes, plus he's got a good style of crimping. Anyway check it out. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/kJt-mKKHqnipzJc.html

@@HighTechLab is is the fumes of the acid? or something else? maybe keeping oxygen from the copper?

​@@SeriousSchitthappen? The lug is mounted on a bus bar and the only way for the vibration to stop would be for the heat shrink to be between the lug and the bus bar. Do you think if I put a spring on the top of my car it will help with the suspension? Good thing that heat shrink is only for cosmetics and not for stupid things like insulation.

@@jackster2568 Haha, good luck to ya.

Should we use die that is one size smaller for better crimp?

​@@razmanhanafiah4839How is that a question? If it makes a better crimp then why would the manufacturer not make a smaller die to start of with? All you're going to do is damage the cable and lug and produce a point of failure.

Why smaller???

Example: Lets say we have 1" tubing 2:1. It can shrink to 1/2". The best fit will be in the middle - for 3/4" cable.

@@apivovarov2 based on your example I did this perfect. I am using one inch heat shrink that is a 3:1 tubing.

@@HighTechLab All these people that don't have a UKposts channel or any verifiable credentials whatsoever are sooooo critical of your effort.

When it is flat, it measures 1 1/2" wide, Not sure what that actually converts to in terms of diameter...I bought a kit that had the wire, lugs & heat shrink, so I didn't really have to figure out what size it should be.

wrong size

Keeps moisture out of the joint. For best results use heat shrink that has glue on the inside.

@@HighTechLab and insulation for the stub

Those are absolutely beautiful tools to have. The crimper I used however is about 60 bucks on Amazon and for the average Joe that doesn't do it for a living but wants to work on their RV it gets the job done a lot better than how some people cobble things together. By making a video showing how someone can do something cheap but still properly we save a lot of diyers the risk of having fires from doing things wrong and having bad connections

With my crimper I find the dye that is a little bit larger and just shave down the flat spots where the dies hit before the crimp is fully made. I use an angle grinder but a Dremel might work. This allows things to close up a bit more and establish a proper crimp

@@HighTechLab that sounds like a good idea, do you think the "35" die was marked wrong, and maybe was for a bigger wire? or do you think my "2 awg" wire from windy nation or the lug was marked wrong? i have 2 giant battery banks i am building and i want to know for sure i am using 2 awg wire with the proper crimps. thanks again for all your help, you should see the cables i made a few years ago, they suck bad and i bought all the wrong stuff, none the less i am on the right path due to content like this.

@@jasonbrown467 they are marked with mm² not awg. It's like thinking a 10mm wrench is an incorrectly marked 7/16 wrench. Sure you can grind a wrench to make the larger size fit but that doesn't mean it's wrong it's just a different unit of measurement. Windy Nation lugs are good ones. If they match your wire gauge then you should have no problem modifying the dies a little bit. I write with sharpie on all of mine when I get them dialed in for a particular lug and wire gauge.

@@HighTechLab they are marked using mm², it doesnt say mm² specifically they all just numbers and i found a chart that says 2 awg wire requires the die stamped "35", for the record i never even heard of "mm²" before cracking open this set, who knows maybe i am missing something and will unravel this mystery in a few days.

@@HighTechLab I used a grinder to adjust my 35mm to 2awg. It meant taking off about one mm. After I got it close, I dressed the surfaces flat and back into mating with one another by putting them back in the too and closing them down to almost snug on a thin metal file. The file takes off the high spots and you can keep tightening the tool a bit at a time as you get the surfaces back into sync with one another. Close is good enough and way better than what I can do with my eye alone. I've used the same kind of trick to fit stone, wood and metal objects together with a joint you can't get a piece of paper into. It's a bit of a pain with this tool because it is a little loose in the way it holds the dies. Thanks for the video.

16. We have a link for it in the description

It's possible that it did!! I know telecom has a LOT of backup battery systems.

I don't believe that to be the truth.

So, I just went and looked this up - I totally misspoke. I recalled the $200 figure from research years ago. What the real situation was, was that I went to The Geek Group National Science Institute, a Nonprofit based out of Grand Rapids, MI. I was looking through their available materials and whatnot and offered $200 for a couple of fuses. Essentially, they were like !!! $200?!?!?!? Okay sure, but here, you can have the fuses, and this wire, and this shelf of capacitors, and these 3 NST's and OOOH Here's a 4000 Amp Current Transformer!!!! When I got home, I looked up the value of what I had got, and the reality is that the lugs are around 50 bucks each, and the 4 of them that were attached to the cables (Seen in the video) would be valued at $200, which is nowhere close to what I had paid. I was in-fact mistaken, and you can find them on Platt and Graybar for 40-50 bucks all day. The $200 figure was new price for all 4 lugs on the two cables, combined. I'm too young to be forgetting things already, lol.

They are 3M safety glasses...They just happened to be tinted. It's all that I could find at the time and wasn't going to use the saw without safety glasses. Ever had metal shavings in the eye? THAT is what's NOT COOL!!!!

You always want to wear some kind of safety glasses when you are using a saw