Anderson recommend against soldering and the Powerpole crimper from West Mountain Radio PWRcrimp - Crimp Tool for Powerpole® Connectors - West Mountain Radio and available from several UK suppliers does an excellent job and is well worth the cost. I crimped 24 just yesterday with the only problems being a sore wrist today. The Powerpole insertion tool is cheap and while a small screwdriver will work, the insertion tool does assist with removal, if you ever need to extract a contact.
Jim
I solder all mine and never had a problem, I’m not a big fan of crimping, The crimping tools are not cheap from memory. There are a couple of good UTube videos on how to solder them. You have to be careful not to get solder on the blade of the terminal. I’ve now switched all my DC connectors to Power Poles and they are great.
73 de John EI/VK6NU
Likewise have soldered a number of Anderson connectors without any problems. Just make sure there is not any excess solder splashed over the outer body of the terminals.
A small bladed screwdriver can be used to push the terminals in until they click into place.
Double check the polarity before doing so as they can be a pain to get out.
Regards, Nick
Me too. I have a wooden clothes peg glued to a small block of wood, with the ‘holding’ end filed to a convenient shape.
This lurks on the bench and is very useful for holding connector parts for soldering, including Powerpoles, BNC centres etc. The advantage of using a wooden clamp is that it doesn’t damage the plated contact surface…
Adrian
G4AZS
Hi all
SOTA Beams website has an excellent tutorial on soldering them
- Phil VK2JDL
in this thread of mine here:
Matt VK1MA has recommended some short bullet to (forget name) connector (2 per pack) so you can cut the connector off and fit powerpoles to the little lead, and not mess with the battery.
Better if you read why etc in the thread, but thought I’d mention.
Richard’s video is good - tinning the contact and the wire separately is the way to go. But don’t over-do the solder when tinning the wire and do not be tempted to add extra solder to top up the large volume a the back of the contact once the wire is in place. If you feed in more solder it will likely wick up the wire under the insulation. This will provide a point for brittle failure. I’ve had two fail this way, out of the ~10 I have had in use over the past ~1 year.
My preference would be for crimping, but the tool is a bit of an investment.
Simon
Ultimately you should be considering the type of wire and number of strands in said wire, the “crimp” terminal isn’t fussed if you solder it or crimp it IMHO.
Crimping has the advantage of revealing more stress and avoiding a brittle fracture. Soldering them is fine in most cases.
As an additional tip I reverse fill the back of the powerpole with hot-melt glue to provide some additional protection, hopefully.
Jonathan,
1 Like
Crimping is technique you have to learn and practice. The reason why many get a better result soldering is simple, they have had lots more practice soldering than crimping. And you often need the special (aka expensive) tool to do a proper crimp.
I’ve seen comments that Powerpoles can unplug with quite a light tug. Is this an issue in reality or just someone needing to find fault and not really a problem?
Hi Guys
Thanks for all you tips and advice. Have gone down the soldered route and have fitted them to the battery, charger and radio power cable. All seems fine so will see how they fair in the wild.
I have found soldering, when properly done, provides the more reliable junction than crimping.
Particulary in joins that are exposed to the elements or rough usage in the field.
The Anderson plugs I have plug into each other with a noticeable click and if anything require a bit of effort to separate them.
Nick
Powerpoles connect firmly if the contact is seated properly in the housing. If you don’t get it all the way in, they can pull apart easily.
Generally, Powerpoles are very simple. Crimp, then push the contact all the way in until it clicks. Done.
Soldering works, too, but solder can stiffen stranded wire and increase breakage in some situations.
wunder
I must have used 20 or 30 pairs of power poles and have soldered every single one of them and inserted them all using the small instrument from behind approach - I have used a variety of cable sizes from the largest ones that just fit into the connector (when using a spare / replacement cable for 100W radio) to small ones for very low power requirements and have had no problem with the connections to any of them.
When in use they do not take much of a tug to disconnect one from another, but I have rarely had that happen unless I’ve managed to tread on the cable or get a cable tangled up in my feet.
Stewart
I’ve just put a pair of power poles on a Zippy LiFePO 4200mAh and it took some doing I can tell you. Well, it took some doing because I forgot something quite basic about Power Poles: the pusher helps a great deal. I used the normal PP15-45 housing, but with the 45 A contacts. This was the right choice in terms of contacts, my mistake was in trying to push the contact into the housing just by pinching the cable. That works with stiff copper wire, but with the soft 10 AWG silicone cable it just bulges and gets stuck in the housing. A small flat bladed screwdriver sorted out what was becoming a major headache, phew!
Good luck soldering that cable on the 4200mAh LiFePOs, I hope you have a blow torch handy.
Looking forward to trying out the pack tomorrow hopefully.
73 de OE6FEG / M0FEU
Matt
Please think health and safety!
Install a fuse direct to one battery terminal. That battery can happily deliver 200A, just before the smoke is released. I use a 20A spade fuse 
with car style spade terminals (little silicone applied grease to keep the corrosion at bay).
Incidentally I use 2 X 5Ah Lipos (each with a 20A fuse), parallel up to at the time of use to give me 2 Hrs of activation at 80W CW/SSB. My choice of connector is the XT40 but that is just me. Soldering is not a problem, 25W iron, a little flux and time required.
Regards
David
Well I have never had an issue with soldering Powerpoles or inserting the contacts into the housings using a screwdriver. They are excellent connectors. All of my 4AH and 2.2AH LiPOs are fitted with them with an in-line fuse to each one. When I use these batteries to power my 857D, I have a method of switching which only parallels them once they are required so that they are transported unconnected. I seem to recall I picked up this suggestion from John G4YSS. Maybe LiFePO4 batteries are more tolerant.
Gerald G4OIG
Well OK, maybe I unintentionally exaggerated a little. But personally, I would still use a blow torch and a large pot of flux to solder these thick wires rather than a soldering iron. Also, connectors can be heated up very hot before the wire is stuck into them. When you solder wire to wire, which I did, the heat is conducted away from the splice very quickly. That heat could be conducted into the battery, which may not be very good for the cells. I only meant to suggest that crimps have their advantages.
de OE6FEG / M0FEU
Matt
I echo Geralds comments but was told to not solder them but i bought the crimper. Best investment I made
Also I made up a fuse holder with the poles on it and i can insert it wherever i need it. i.e the zippy batteries
I used a 40 watt iron Matt as my 18 watt one wouldn’t get the joint up to temperature. I must admit to having developed an aversion to crimped joints as I have had several professionally prepared cables go open circuit. Obviously “professional” does not guarantee reliability.
Obviously they weren’t very professionally crimped.
From my days back in medical and defense electronics, when I worked where real stuff you could touch was made unlike now where people pay millions for lots of 1’s and 0’s, the two biggest improvements in improving reliability were replacing soldered connections with crimps where possible and rigorous application of the ESD protection protocols during assembly and service. The crimping was done with some seriously highend crimping machines using wires correctly prepared. Infant mortality fails in looms dropped and as the assembly girls got into the swing of things, faults in looms disappeared apart from where soldered connections were made. They got bonus payments for have very low defect rates and so would reject and redo any crimp they didn’t like. Not all professionals are professional about this and will let dodgy stuff out if they don’t think it will come back and cost them.
But, you have to use the correct cable and crimps and prepare it all properly otherwise you wont see any of the improvements. Or… a ham fisted goon, who you wouldn’t let service your wheelbarrow, can probably make a badly soldered connection that will be better than crimped connection. Most of us do not have access to decent crimping tools and are probably better soldering instead.
The other thing is good soldering irons are not cheap. For occasional soldering, some of the cheap irons are OK but one of the best investments I made was buying a Weller TCP iron and stand, not cheap now. Being 45W, it has the “oomph” to do bigger jobs but being temperature controlled it doesn’t reach fusion temperature.
I have a 1977 vintage Antex X25 25W mains iron and a 12V 25W iron for field repairs on SOTA gear. I doubt either have the guts to solder chunky cable to power poles TBH.