Crimped ferrules (?) on ends of 13A cables

"Bootlace Ferrules"

I prefer the ones that have a short plastic sleeve incorporated to act as funnel and ensure no free strands escape.

or the uninsulated ones:

Andrew

uninsulated bootlace ferrules

rs, cpc, farnell, rapid etc

Not a good idea as the solder is soft and creeps under the pressure of the screw terminal, loosening over time.

These are what you need (other suppliers available):

Pick the right size for the wire you've got.

You also need the proper crimp tool, e.g.:

Don't tin stranded wires for screw terminals, the solder flows under pressure, leaving a poor contact.

If you've already got a proper tool for crimp terminals, which isn't suitable for ferrules, you could cut the contact part off, as per

NT

Then you didn't tighten it enough to start with.

Think of the solder as a mastic to fill the gaps between the copper, but the copper makes the joint

En el artículo , Andy Burns escribió:

Resulting in this:

Those are nothing like the ones on the ends of the piece of cable I removed from the extension block. The ones shown in my pic are very short. Only about 7mm long.

They also appear to be much longer than on the cables in my pic. (Maybe the short kind in my pic are no longer available/used; Woolworths has been defunct in Britain for several years now.)

MM

But these look too long for the screwed post they're inserted into. The bared ends of the wires are about 7mm in length, whereas these uninsulated ferrules from e.g. Farnell look longer than that. Or is it permitted to trim off any surplus length with sidecutters?

MM

Ah, the *right*-hand side of these seem to be much more like the ones on my cable (before being crimped on).

MM

Yes, they're only tin-plated copper, so cut easily.

In the days when appliances did not come with a moulded plug the tinned wir es you used to get was more for testing purposes and you were usually advis ed by the manufacturer to trim the wires down removing the tinned ends for the reasons stated earlier, however not all RTFM. The tinned wires were usu ally too long to fit comfortably in a plug anyway. Bare wire or ferrules ar e the recommended means.

Richard

ISTR that is (or used to be) common practice with speaker wires, but they usually go in sprung rather than screwed terminals (& obviously don't carry much current).

Something from here would probably fit...

And I'd agree with not tinning the wires. I was taught to - if there's room - double the earth wire back on itself so in the event of a pull-out it would be the last to be disconnected. Can't say I bother nowadays.

Cheers

Gulp!

The other reason not to tin is it provides a fatigue point at the exit from the solder lump. That's not much of a problem in household wiring, but it is in something that sees vibration - like a power tool or a car.

Theo

A couple of years ago I was at Cosford Air Museum. They had just taken delivery of a Nimrod, and had removed the wings to transport it. It was plonked outside one of the hangers.

The removed wings exposed the spaghetti of wiring - all cut. It was heartbreaking in a way.

Hundreds of wires - all white. I presume that was some part of making it difficult to easily reverse engineer.

It was interesting to think that at sometime someone would have known what each wire did, and where it went.

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

Actually, I would say it's a very clear illustration of how the solder has crept under the neutral and earth screws.

Another problem with soldering tails is that it makes it very easy to pinch them off by tightening the screw too much. Think of how easy it is to pinch a bit of solder off a reel with your thumbnail. Now try doing that with stripped copper wire.

I used to tin my wire tails; I don't any more. If it's possible to strip a longer length of insulation back, double the stripped end over and insert that in the plug terminal, I do that instead.