but dont overheat the motor brushes, batteries, or speed controller when soldering or you can do £££s of damage.
in other words, only solder if you know what you are doing, and DONT, (like someone whos name I wont mention) SUPERGLUE your battery cells together!!! Yes, someone I know was that dumb, and no, they didnt work.
Peter,
Unless you have no other option... solder every time!!
What you discribed sounds like a problem with the wire rather than the solder it may have been a fairly stiff steel stranded cable that failed due to work hardening at the solder junction. We use an extremely flexible, pure copper very high strand count silicon rubber covered wire that goes by the wonderful name of wet Noodle in all our machines http://www.robotmarketplace.com/marketplace_wire.htmlhttp://www.robotmarketplace.com/marketplace_wire.html
We have never encountered the problem you discribe, but to be 100% safe you would could provide some sort of strain relief at the solder conection to hold the cable still reletive to the joint and allow any movement to be absorbed by the main body of the cable run.
(On the other hand you could just wire up the whole machine to NATO milatary standard using Raybraid 101 steel braid sleaving and be done with it!:wink
dont get me started on the wiring of NATOs Tornado, talk about time bomb waiting to happen!!!
i would also suggest regular inspection, as everything in a robot can come loose, so keeping on top of them, such as a good look inside with every battery charge, can help to gradually eliminate these types of problems as they start to occur. Im sure youll be fine though, as you already have a really good grasp of what you need to be doing.
A good crimp is always better than a solder joint, however you need both the right tools and the right materials to get a good crimp. Soldering often produces better results.
As suggested, soldering can induce a stress point, but this is rarely ever a problem, properly fixed cables wont be moving.
crimp it, then solder it, then duct tape it...
then duct tape it again... just to be sure
For my drill motors I crimped the connections (so it would be easier to remove them if I burnt a motor out) and then put a layer of hot glue on them to make sure any hits wouldnt dislodge them easily. Two months later though when it came to removing my motors, it wasnt too difficult to pull the connectors off - so maybe not the best solution!
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