Connectors Connectors Connectors

I'd like to know what people are using and why.

So far, I've stuck to Anderson, but sometimes they seem loose, The connections that is.

Thoughts?


Tommy L ends.... \\m//

I use tape to hold them together, the other week I purchased a anderson crimping tool from Grin. It's well worth it.

Rodney64 said:

I use tape to hold them together, the other week I purchased a anderson crimping tool from Grin. It's well worth it.

Click to expand...

Yes, I use tape as well lol But I'm concerned about the physical pressure of the blades themselves.

The bigger Anderson seem good but the 30/45 seem a little loose

Tommy L sends.... \\m//

Here's my post from the connectors "stickie" thread. I was showing the difference between the Deans and the Hobby-King XT60 (60-amps continuous), and by the way, they now have the larger XT90. http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=42789

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2767#p588514

The pin should have a bit of wiggle inside the housings so that when you snap a pair together the surfaces of the pins sit flat..

if improperly crimped, and used with too large a gauge of wire, there is a potential for the pins to snap in but only be touching at one of the corners making for a bad connection.

You should be able to hold the wire and the housing and twist a bit, see the pin float in there.. that's good.

Ypedal said:

The pin should have a bit of wiggle inside the housings so that when you snap a pair together the surfaces of the pins sit flat..

if improperly crimped, and used with too large a gauge of wire, there is a potential for the pins to snap in but only be touching at one of the corners making for a bad connection.

You should be able to hold the wire and the housing and twist a bit, see the pin float in there.. that's good.

Click to expand...

Gaston!

Yep! I'm using too big of wire. My Bad! That is great info!

Tommy L sends.... \\m//

The problem that I have is the spark when connecting it damages them and this makes a poor connection. With a precharge this my help.

Rodney64 said:

The problem that I have is the spark when connecting it damages them and this makes a poor connection. With a precharge this my help.

Click to expand...

I run over 130volts ..... I always pre charge

Tommy L sends... \\m//

spinningmagnets said:

Here's my post from the connectors "stickie" thread. I was showing the difference between the Deans and the Hobby-King XT60 (60-amps continuous), and by the way, they now have the larger XT90.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2767#p588514

Click to expand...

I have been there before! Great Topic! I'm always looking for greater pressure on the blades

Tommy L sends... \\m//

For single wire Anderson connections I often add a dummy housing so that it's possible to lock the connector together.

But yes, it's important to pay attention to the shape of the blade before fitting into the housing. Any drastic bends will likely give you contact issues.

I like Andersons, but there are so many fakes about, often of poor quality, that the only ones I can be assured are real come from pretty expensive suppliers here, which is a bit of a problem.

My experience with buying some of the fakes (by accident) wasn't good, as the springs were too weak and lost their temper quickly, followed by the connector overheating and the housing melting. This wasn't on a high power application, either, I was running around 20 to 25A through them, with decent wires either side and good connections (although admittedly soldered, rather than crimped).

I've used andersons a lot, and there was a learning curve on getting em crimped and installed correctly. I don't crimp them ( 45 amps) to wire bigger than 12 guage anymore for one thing. I take my time, and use an ordinary klien linemans crimper. Takes more time, but I don't do thousands of em.

My strongest controllers are only 40 amps, so I've not had trouble with any heating up that were put on 12 guage wire. Had some on 10 guage wire make poor connection on a lipo pack and melt though.

I still like them for many things, like the battery to the controller connection, and charger plugs. But for a lot of stuff on HK packs it's just a lot more convenient to use the 4 mm bullets they come with or larger. Then I make a bullet to anderson adapter for just the connection at the controller. I paralell packs with all bullets y connectors I make up. Most of my bikes have andersons on the phases too, replacing cheap trailer bullets. Never had trouble, even when mud riding the dirt bike. Don't even tape the phase plugs. I do tape connectors just to prevent accidental unplug. I tape any plug paralelling two lipos, regardless of type. Lost a few packs that way, when one pack was discharged like it was paralelled after a plug worked loose.

Andersons do well with taking the spark when connecting typical 48v 20 amp controllers. The tip chars, but the blade doesn't. Get em at powerwerks in north america.

I'm still using an Anderson SB50 (which has 75A contacts) on the main battery connector for CrazyBike2, but the CA shunt still has PP45s on it, so the power for the controller still goes thru two sets of those to get to the now-80A+ controller on there. I don't run 80A continuous, but there are long bursts at that rate when I can't keep my lead thumb from pushing WOT during acceleration. :lol: 20MPH comes up really quick at that rate, though, so the longest bursts are usually under 5 seconds.

Still, I've examined the PP45s and found no sign of contact or housing problems, either on the ebikes.ca-crimped contacts or on the ones I've done myself (with a crimper not designed for htem, but whcih does a pretty good job even with my weak grip).

I use a circuit breaker from a powerchair to deal with the spark of 14s (or now 15s), so no eating away at the contacts.


I use the same connector types in the same places on the Fusin Test Bike, but it doesn't have a switch/breaker to take up the spark, so there *is* contact damage at the tips from the hefty spark of 14s. Much much lower currents, around 19A peak and way less than half that cruise, so again no contact/housing issues. Oh, also, I am lazy so have not replaced the automotive bullets on the Fusin controller with PP45s yet, so I am just sticking the bullet tips into the CA shunt's PP45 housings, and even with that minimal contact area there is still no issue, at the low currents used on this bike.

4mm bullets all the way.
When they are not powerful enough, just parallel them up.
Cheap, easy to solder, don't fall off, can't knock em.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=28694

Can't blame you on that. Were I starting over now, I might go all bullets. Not swapping andersons off of 4-5 controllers now though. Would have to go better than 45 amp andersons for real power though.

For really crazy power, I doubt you'd want anything soldered. You'd want 200 amp stuff, all well crimped with a very good tool. Crimped connectors bolted to bussbars kind of thing. Same stuff you see on a car conversion I mean.

I've been using xt60 connectors and they're good and tight. Almost too tight sometimes. I hate the arcing when connecting the battery. I'm going to do up my battery box this weekend and will include a breaker or heavy duty switch to prevent it. Any connector will eventually be damaged by too much arcing.

Add a button/switch with an in-line resistor to charge the capacitors in the controller (this is the reason for the spark, which will be worse the higher the voltage of your pack), then flip the main power switch/breaker. Otherwise the breaker will arc instead of the connector. Search these terms:

"anti-spark circuit"..."pre-charge resistor"

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=40678&start=30#p602048
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=37213#p541101

F is Fuse, R is resistor, ESC is Electronic Speed Controller

I now have a bunch of XT-60's and XT-90's on hand. Yep! They sure do fit tight! I also purchased more Andersons with the 30 and 45amp connectors.
I purchased the bare housings and a couple bags of connectors. I also bought that crimp tool for 15,30 & 45's.

Remember, if you purchase XT-60's or 90's, you will need shrink wrap. Also, I like to double shrink them. One around each wire, then
one around both wires to the connector housing

Tommy L sends....\\m//

Today I pulled the wiring out to change my controller and found the clear plastic covering on the bullets completely melted together. I'm now going to change to Anderson's. The wiring itself is still ok.

If it's melted on the connectors, is there any sign of damage on the wiring itself?

If not, it's a resistance problem in the contact/contact interface, or in the wire/contact interface.

If the latter, it's fairly simple to fix by redoing the crimp or solder (whichever that type of contact uses) to better electrically connect the wire to the contact.

If the former, larger contacts of the same type may handle the current better, but you first need to know how much current it is. Without knowing that, you can change to a different contact type and still have the same problem, if it is not rated high enough for the currents it needs to handle.

Another potential issue with Andersons is you must use a housing and contact size that allows the wire *with insulation* to float inside the housing without pressing against the housing. If it is a tight fit it will distort the way teh contacts slide against each other, you will have higher resistance than you should, and it will heat up more than it should, possibly causing exactly the same problem again, but worse. Worse because with Andersons, the only thing that holds the contacts against each other *is* the housing w/spring, so as soon as it begins to distort from heat, they can push away from each other more, and either make no connection, or worse make such a poor connection that it gets incredibly hot and completely melts the housing (or anywhere in between those two).

So if the bullets taht melted were on the phase wires (most likely as they see much higher currents than battery wires), you should see about how high the phase amps are before changing connectors. If you do go andersons, you may want PP75 instead of PP45, for the higher current handling, larger wire gauge handling, and significantly higher contact and retention forces.

Remember also that andersons have two kinds of contacts for every connector--high or low retention force (shape of the "hook" at the tip, AFAICR). Powerwerx only has one kind though, but I don't know which it is--I expect it is the low retention force version--you'd have to ask.

Thanks for all that info Amberwolf, the wiring looks ok. The phase wire from the motor to the controllers quite long so I'll shorten it first as The excess 12 inches may have been bunched together creating a lot of heat.

I'm using the 45 amp Anderson's and a crimping tool that I purchased from ca.bikes. I've just checked the Anderson and the wires arn't touching the sides of the housing.

I will try and test the phase amps today

Free waterproof molex samples is where it's at

Rodney64 said:

The phase wire from the motor to the controllers quite long so I'll shorten it first as The excess 12 inches may have been bunched together creating a lot of heat.

Click to expand...

It is highly unlikely the wiring could produce enough heat to damage the connector shells without damaging the wire insulation itself, and you would almost certainly smell that every time it did it.

Shorter phase wires may not do all that much to change heat in them, as their resistance is probably not that much if all the excess you ahve is only a foot. Look up the wire gauge/resistance chart (there's a thread about it and also via google), you'll see that the resistance of most larger wires (even just 14g or 12g) is so low per foot that it shouldn't be heating significantly over only a few feet, even if bunched up inside a bag, even with a couple hundred amps on the phases (possibly a lot more momentarily, but so short a duration it should be able to dissipate that heat).

Liveforphysics has discussed stuff like that in a few threads, too, here and there, but I don't have any links.


My guess is it's less than half a watt per foot of heat generation even with 14g wire, assuming 250A on the phases.

I dunno how high phase amps are on my setup, but probably a lot higher than that, since I can smell teh wires even though they are out in the open (well, inside their outer jacket but that is in open air), and I'm pretty sure they're 14g, though they coudl be smaller. Whatever came with the original 9C ebikekit.com stuff. It's a Methods 18FET he modded up for very high currents; I already blew up some FETs on it at 150A+ battery current trying to start a burnout (couldn't, bike is too heavy, traction too good) before unmodding the shunt back to as close to original as I can get it, so now battery current is down to half of that or so, but phase currents at startup must still be insane as the controller gets pretty dang hot and so does the motor adn the phase wires.

Wish list, range of cam cage type connectors, no crimping, no soldering, messing around with high resistance and dodgy connections.
Just stripped ends overlapping in square cage, cam lock and rubber shrouds over connectors, connected in seconds.