In article "Ralph Mowery" writes:

"Bob Wilson" wrote in message
...
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


Crimping works well if the correct type of tool is used. I have an
inexpensive crimper that is made for the power poles and have no problem
with them. Is that set you have made especially for the power poles ?

Stranded wire is recommended to be crimped because if it is soldered it
becomes the equal of a solid wire where the solder wicks up the wire and if
flexed or bent many times it may break. If you don't worry about the wire
breaking then soldering is fine.
Solid wire does not crimp well.

Not only does solder wick up the stranded wire and make it non-flexible and
prone to breakage, it also causes it to torque the actual connector inside
the housing to make poorer connections if the cable has side force or twist
on it.

Also, there is the very high risk of wicking solder up on the active sliding
contact, covering the silver contact with a tin/lead one, reducing the contact
quality.

The crimp tool is faster, allows getting the ends on straight (so they are
not torqued in the housing), and does a better job.

Alan