Crimping vs Soldering

[Davo]

Why would that be the case? Both crimping and soldering works when done right, and both can fail when done wrong. Solder itself doesn't take to well to moving about (it cracks), but it is usually not a problem if the cables are properly secured.

Quoted for Truth.

[printbus]

My two cents worth - jstck pretty much has the best post - that both approaches can provide good results, or both can provide bad. Both crimping and soldering are skills, and require the right tools.

Crimping especially requires the right tool for the contact and the wire being used. The color coded barrel contacts in the NASA reference are great to work with, but the crimp tools for them are quite expensive and any serious manufacturing house subjects them to a calibration regime that ensures the right amount of pressure is applied to the crimp. The contacts are color coded so that the technician can ensure he's got the right crimp head for the contact. Done improperly or with the wrong tool, crimped contacts can be unreliable and easy to pull from the wire, or can damage the wire by cutting into the strands.

When I splice, I always solder since I don't have an assortment of crimp ferrule sizes or the right crimp tools. Soldered splices get covered in heatshrink.

On connector contacts, some I solder and some I crimp. Contacts intended to be soldered always get soldered. Crimp contacts will be crimped IF I have the right crimper, which I seldom do. If I don't have the crimper the contact is carefully soldered, with any tabs meant to grab the insulated part of the wire bent manually with small needlenose. Part of the skill here is to be careful in how much heat and solder is being applied and in manually bending the wire holding tabs. It's easy to solder a crimp contact and then find the contact won't fit into the connector since there's too much solder or the tabs weren't bent right.

An additional comment - solder slowly creeps when it is under pressure. This is why you should NEVER apply solder to a stranded wire that will be crimped or that will be tightened under a screw head (like on a power supply terminal block). Doing so will guarantee a poor connection eventually. What I have often done in at least personal work is add solder to the stranded wire, crimp the contact onto it, and then reflow the contact with a dab of additional solder.