I have been only soldering them for some years. I saw in a recent QST
article that you really must crimp them, but no reason given for why.
I find doing it with solder (a) makes it a lot easier to keep the
"hollow end" of the PowerPole round so that it fits easily in the
plastic cover and (b) also makes them fairly easy to take apart without
damage so that I can reuse the PowerPole.
(I do have a fancy, fairly professional, set of crimping tools, but I
also found the terminals frequently got "squished" out of shape."
Bob Wilson

On 1/18/2016 12:00 PM, gareth wrote:
"gareth" wrote in message
...
"gareth" wrote in message
...
Decided to Power Pole all the 12V gear here
First sttempt at crimping seems to have failed because the connector would
not
slide easily into the shroud, and it was a devil of a job to get the hook
over the end of the flat spring.
Re-reading the gen, it would appear that the crimping has ended up too
flat such that even
when clipped in, there is no free movement of the wire end. portending a
bad contact if I continue.
(I expected to have to sacrifice the first attempt, but any suggestions,
please?)


Problem solved by resorting to soldering. In any case, the guy who lent me
the
crimpers had been using them for the 100A, or thereabouts, versions for his
5" gauge battery-powered Claas 45 diesel outline, so no wonder that even the
smallest setting on his crimpers wouldn't close properly on a 30A jobbie.



I