Connectors for Joining Data/NMEA cables

[Lon nan Gruagach]

There are five industries which I've worked in and which really care about reliability. We might learn from them:

1. Automotive
2. Aviation
3. Spacecraft
4. Oil-well instrumentation
5. Telecommunications.

All of them crimp rather than solder when joining wires to each other or to a connector. The reliability is much higher, especially in the presence of vibration. So whether you know how to solder or not isn't that relevant. Crimp wires and if in a hostile environment then cover the joint with silicone gel inside a boot or heat-shrink is my preferred way.

An impressive sounding list but.... Most of those industries have enough dish to almost never need to splice cables, they would just use one piece that was long enough to start with. Cable termination is another matter.
As for telecoms, crimp?? I really don't think so. Pre krone block insulation displacement terminations were either twisted in a tapered but or wire wrapped on a post. Since IDC became the standard paired knlves cut insulation and form a scraping contact with the conductor. The only place I have seen crimps in telecoms was on handset coily cables with tinsil(spawn of Beelzebub himself) conductors.

 

[tross]

When I worked in the Avionics (military) industry we had to use soldered joints on motors and servos for radar systems. The key to soldering is to make the joint mechanically sound first. Most issues with soldering is so called “dry joints" this can be contamination but is normally movement before the solder has cooled down enough. I had the same problem moving all my instruments to the wheel binnacle via the tubes either side. As I said the trick is to make them mechanically sound first. Strip a fair length of out cable from both ends so you can stagger the joints. Strip away the insulation and then tin each end with 60/40 resin cored solder. Then fashion a hook at each end and then hook one over the other and twist them to make a mechanical joint – then you can solder them together. The reason to stagger the joints is to prevent shorts between (you may want to cover these with heat shrink) and the outer heat shrink doesn’t have to accommodate such a large difference in diameters.

 

[[70521]]

There are five industries which I've worked in and which really care about reliability. We might learn from them:

1. Automotive
2. Aviation
3. Spacecraft
4. Oil-well instrumentation
5. Telecommunications.

All of them crimp rather than solder when joining wires to each other or to a connector. The reliability is much higher, especially in the presence of vibration. So whether you know how to solder or not isn't that relevant. Crimp wires and if in a hostile environment then cover the joint with silicone gel inside a boot or heat-shrink is my preferred way.

All to do with cost...

When I worked in electronics for MOD specifications everything was soldered.

 

[jdc]

All to do with cost...

When I worked in electronics for MOD specifications everything was soldered.

Space craft payloads are not really that cost sensitive, and nor is down-hole instrumetation. They used to insist on soldering great big wiring looms but that's now a thing of the past.

To the poster who pointed out that you don't generally join cables in these industries he's quite correct but when attaching a wire it'snno longer soldered but crimped in connectors, including coaxial. It's to do with reliability in vibration. I count IDC as 'crimped' for the purposes of this discussion - ie crimped == not soldered.