X-Virus-Scanned: clean according to Sophos on Logan.com X-SpamCatcher-Score: 1 [X] Return-Path: Received: from [24.51.79.189] (account rob HELO mac.logan.com) by logan.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.1.5) with ESMTPSA id 1780034 for lml@lancaironline.net; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:45:05 -0500 Message-ID: <45B2C5A3.30904@Logan.com> Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:45:07 -0500 From: Rob Logan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070111 SeaMonkey/1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lancair Mailing List Subject: [Fwd: To solder or not to solder, that is the question] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -------- Original Message -------- From: Gary Hall Hi Guy's, I am an A&P and have avoided soldering ANYTHING that is connected to an engine - that said, a previous post eloquently stated other possibilities where solder can be used. For me each connection is a case by case decision. I believe Fred has presented a very good guideline to keep in mind when deciding what to do. I do have one suggestion to make. You can avoid the "big" bulge a bit by overlapping the wire ends (horizontally), hold wire in the middle of the splice with narrow needle-nose pliers. Then twist the wire on the right side clockwise and the wire on the left side of the pliers twist in a counter clockwise direction. O.K. to reverse directions if you are left-handed. Remove pliers, solder twisted wires and slip the shrink that you placed over one of the wires BEFORE you twisted the wires together. Now you have a smaller "bump" to contend with. This method is used everyday in the electric industry. Typically this type of connection is crimped and not soldered. Sorry no pretty pictures and drawings. Call me if you don't quite have a grasp on my shaky description here (954.979.9494). Glad to to talk you. Warm regards, Gary Fort Lauderdale Executive http://www.uslan.com/hinge-kit.html Fred Moreno wrote: The most common crimp connection for wires is with the little tube. Put a stripped wire end into the tube, then crimp. But you are not done. Now you need to stop relative motion between wire and crimp. Shrink tubing over the entire thing helps, but frequently shrink tubing that fits over the tube is too large to close tightly over the wire to stop the relative motion. And the shrink tubing is not as rigid as a cable clamp. So better is to shrink, and then tie both ends of the connection beyond the tube crimp connector to the bundle to get some rigidity and stop the potential relative motion. The problem is that a bunch of these tubular crimps and shrinks can lead to a big bulge if you are connecting a lot of wires in a bundle as from panel to airframe. You can end up with a bundle that looks like the python that swallowed the rabbit. And this normally occurs where space is at a premium.