Crimp, Solder, Crush

Bedlam wrote:
Digging into connections and terminations, I have found only mechanical connections are accepted on aircraft and marine applications with only some exception. Vibration and movement will eventual cause a pure solder joint to fail. Crimping a joint that has been soldered will most likely break the solder joint. Soldering a crimped joint is possible if you can apply sufficient heat transfer quick enough without getting solder wicking up the wire. For my use, I will focus on reliable yet economical crimping methods. The scope of my entire project will require 60+ crimps to completion, so I am looking at tools that will last long enough without falling apart and still provide a consistent connection.).

This is the crimper I use
Crimper
It is a little pricey but have done hundreds of crimps with it and no problems.
Unfortunately it is on backorder right now.
You might look around their site for alternatives.

You're giving me flash backs of building out cannon plugs and working with Kapton coated wiring... Thanks

Bedlam wrote:
Digging into connections and terminations, I have found only mechanical connections are accepted on aircraft and marine applications with only some exception.

Having worked a wide variety of aircraft electrical systems over the last 39 plus years, mostly of the military fighter variety I can vouch for the crimp connector only requirement for power wires. For signal wires however, they've gone to mostly solder connections often environmentally sealed solder via a hot air system that also environmentally seals the connection during the soldering process (Basically heat shrink sealer over connection while melting a solder sleeve. Getting the connections just right takes a lot of practice, and we have to re-certify in high reliability soldering every couple years.

For crimp connections on the larger power wires, aviation electricians use regularly calibrated crimpers on mil spec sized connectors on mil spec sized wiring so that you get a constant predictable connection every time. With smash type crimping techniques it's kind of the wild west and hard to say just how good it's going to be, or predict if it will overheat or not. Solder connections on the same sized wiring however is tends to be not much better and has it's own issues where it tends to fail when the connection overheats.

As for the Silicone friction tape, everyone that is inclined to try and fix anything should keep it in there tool box. Air Force Mechanics refer to it as F-4 tape. The orange/red version is designed for higher heat areas. For areas that might get oily or greasy we just tie off the ends with a little waxed flat tie string and the stuff holds up really well.

Get time and on half just checking the water......

So as I said earlier I've successfully used one of these

on dozens of solar installations similar, larger and smaller like this

crimping as large as 4/0 (320 strand) welding cable seen as the interconnects down to 8 ga. for some of the A/C lines.

$20 online and the crimps are great, solid and will last many many years.

Skin effect doesn't happen in DC circuits.

Because of the sinosoidal nature of AC circuits that bring in skin effect...the resistance in AC is now impedance which is 1.6 greater than DC.

We're talking about battery power source.

This is really having too much ado about nothing.

In general stranded wire is used in mobile applications because solid wire can break due to vibration and fatigue easier than stranded. Solid will carry more amperage than stranded due to consistent material density in the cross section.

More OT: Once you get into higher frequencies, the skin effect is utilized in waveguides to transmit high frequency signals at larger power levels produced by magnetrons or klystrons. The cross section of the waveguide is predicated on the wavelength of the signal

SidecarFlip wrote:
I may be FOS, but I seem to remember from my high school electrical class (they had electricity when I went to high school....) that a stranded cable carries electrons better than solid cable because the electrons travel on the outer surface of each strand.

Depends on your frequency. For DC it's all about the cross-section, stranded or solid.

For RF (higher frequency AC) skin effect comes into play, and high power RF conductors resemble water pipe more than electrical cable.

skin effect

I may be FOS, but I seem to remember from my high school electrical class (they had electricity when I went to high school....) that a stranded cable carries electrons better than solid cable because the electrons travel on the outer surface of each strand. I seem to remember that..

I also seem to remember that conductor grade copper and copper tubing are 2 different alloys. Like I said, could be FOS, that was a long time ago,

Everything I currently own is 12VDC, so I have no plans to wire a higher DC voltage. Charging from multiple sources would get expensive unless I found an abandoned system I could cobble in. There are ways to float ground to tap a higher voltage source at lower potential, but I don't want go through that. Any high current draws will most likely be an inverter close to one of the battery banks with an AC run. If I was collecting energy for the sole purpose of converting to AC, I would be looking at grouping all the batteries in one location and running higher DC voltages to reduce loss and cut down on cable thickness - This would be more typical in an off-grid home or cabin.