Soldering instead of crimping

If you are really anal about the difference, take a GOOD digital multimeter and measure the voltage drop across a crimped connection vs a soldered connection, under heavy load. You will notice a fairly significant voltage drop (millivolts) across most crimps, and no drop across a soldered connection. That said, it likely wouldn't make any difference in the OP's solar connections, where crimps would be fine.

da.bees wrote:
I have a Schumacher charger that I thought was going bad because charge rate jumps up and down. Noticed a spark from postive clamp handle and on closer inspection,the cripmed connection is bad. No corosion,no broken wires and no crack in crimp but gentely moving the handle or wire causes continuity to come and go. Who should know crimping technique better than Schumacher? I say crimp it then solder it. I believe corosion at soldered joints are the result of wrong flux,filler and/or failure to clean flux residue from completed joint.

I've seen the crimps of the schumacher chargers and they are NOT anything resembling a good crimp on the ones I've seen. They just flatten the ears over the wires. An indication of why a bad crimp or bad solder joint gives you problems. A good crimp is gas tight and will last. But as I mentioned earlier, the $10 crimper next to the solderless lugs at the hardware store is NOT a good crimper either. $50 will get you a Sargent crimper with removable crimp dies and one set of crimp dies. about $25 for each set of crimp dies. Will give you a quality crimp on wires between #12 and #24.

In a manufacturing process, crimping is just as effective as soldering and much faster. In a proper crimp, the heat produced by the compression force is enough to cause the metals in the lug and wire to soften and flow together. The lug and wire become welded. If you have ordinary hand tools, instead of specialized crimp tools, this compression weld does not happen and all you have is a relatively good mechanical connection. Moisture can get into the connection and cause corrosion and eventually its failure. Soldering the lug and wire welds them together and lessens the chance of corrosion failure.

I work on new commercial aircraft for a living and as you might imagine, there are thousands of electrical connectors small and large on an airplane. They don't get soldered. They get crimped. They do have a few small wire splices that have solder built into them but 99 percent of the time everything is crimped

If you solder well (most don't) solder them, If you don't then go with the crimps. I have done both, solder and then crimp, and then wrap the whole thing in electrical tape. For me it realy depends on location, If I can get a soldering iron in with out burning the place down I will solder, if not I will just go with the crimp. I will second the good crimper, there is a right, and wrong way to do it.

I have a Schumacher charger that I thought was going bad because charge rate jumps up and down. Noticed a spark from postive clamp handle and on closer inspection,the cripmed connection is bad. No corosion,no broken wires and no crack in crimp but gentely moving the handle or wire causes continuity to come and go. Who should know crimping technique better than Schumacher? I say crimp it then solder it. I believe corosion at soldered joints are the result of wrong flux,filler and/or failure to clean flux residue from completed joint.

Bianchi wrote:
Hi, Would there be any reason not to solder battery connections versus crimping? The application would be for a solar charging system.

solder alone should never be used as a mechanical connection. therefore,you also need to crimp to provide the mechanical connection, then solder if you choose. YES I KNOW that many videos etc. on the web advocate heating a lug, melting the solder and stuffing the wire in and end up with no mechanical connection and rely on the solder as the mechanical connection. If you look at any quality mfg connectors that are soldered, you will find they are crimped and soldered.

However, that also assumes you have the proper equipment for both crimpng and soldering along with the skills for each. From my experience in building and designing electronics, it is much much easier to learn to do a proper crimp with available tools than to learn proper soldering techniques.

And proper tools for crimping is NOT the $10 hand crimper at the hardware store next to the crimp lugs. Figure at least $50 for a good crimper for #10-24 wire, and about the same for the minimum quality connector for lugs down to #4.

if you are skilled at soldering, and want to go ahead and solder the crimped connector.

Personally I spent decades in the electronics industry designing equipment to meet spec's that are far more abusive, corrosive, etc. than RV's would ever see. We found that for terminal connectors proper crimping alone passed these tests with flying colors. Soldering didn't show any decrease in field failure rate, in fact when we went from crimped and soldered joints to crimp only our Field failure rate went down. to easy to have a solder joint with solder up the wire and end up with a failue in vibration at the transition from solid soldered section to stranded wire.

But, this solder vs. crimp discussion comes up every few months, both sides have valid points. I just go with the actual data from my experience and I crimp with a set of high quality crimp tools I've purchased over the years. then, depending on the application I often strain relief and protect the crimp with adhesive lined heat shrink if I think it is appropriate. And I've never had a failure in a crimp connector.

Either method done properly should last a many decades under typical RV use. Either method done improperly will within months give you decades of frustration, problems, and head scratching trying to find a bad connection.

Thoroughness is more important than type of connection. ive been an electrician and ive wired lots of accessories to fire trucks(which have tons of wiring). Ive seen tons of corroded and improperly crimped joints and ive had some of my own soldering fail. The key IMO is make sure connection is clean and well done. Love heat shrink! Here is a link to the crimpers i have and they make a well done crimp...however if it gets corroded...well you get the idea.

http://www.newark.com/3m/tr-490/tools-hand-crimp/dp/98F6600

It was almost 300 i think 20 years ago. LOL id never recommend buying one but you get the idea that each crimp with the 5$ pair should be examined because the potential for frustration comes with every wire connection.

Road Runners wrote:
I built a 45 ft ocean going sail boat several years ago and I crimped and soldered all the electrical terminals. Now it is 25 years later and all those connections are still sound. So crimping is nice and so is soldering but doing them both together, in my opinion, is best. It is what the boat building code called for.

Me too tinned wire works best but you pay for what you get.

there isn't a right or wrong way to answer that question. There are some installations where the directions flatly say: "crip, do not solder". Some Inverters have this warning.
Many other installations suggest soldering.
I find that many soldering joints I make (and I'm pretty good at it) on 12 ga to 16 ga wire will corrode with time and the wire will lose its continuity.