bkloos

Recipes 

UGH, what a PITA!!!

Before I drive myself crazy, does anyone have any suggestions as to an easy way to solder/connect the thin RTD wires to the panel mount connectors sold through Auber?

The solder tabs on the connectors are thin blades with no hole for wire insertion. I cant imagine how I'm going to solder these up with only two hands...???

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Bryan

Dunerunner

Recipes 

Bryan, Put the blade of the connecter in a pair of vise grip pliers. That leaves you one hand for the solder and the other for the iron.

Support the vise grips with two full 12 oz bottles of home brew and drink after soldering!!

passedpawn

Recipes 

I don't know what those thin blades look like (pic?), but maybe you should just crimp a faston connector onto the wire.

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and others take delight in the hurling and the bowling
but I take delight in the juice of the barley
and courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early

Budzu

Recipes 

It is a pain I agree :P I used those and to make things worse, I had to do it with the connectors mounted in the box.
Here's how I had most success:
Apply solder to iron, coat wire with solder. Now hold the wire against the concave side of the pin, and heat the other side of the pin with the iron, carefully. It should melt in the wire and attach to the pin.

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bkloos

Recipes 

Thanks Guys,

I'm going to try a hybrid of all your advice. First thing is to remove them from the panel. I'll then clamp them into a vise, tin both the blade and the wire and then solder together.

I would love to use crimp connectors, but the pins are just too small...

It would be nice to be able to make a more mechanical connection other than than solder alone, but in this case the pins are just too small.

Seems I've saved best for last! Will report back with results later today.

Thanks,

Bryan

SweetSounds

Recipes 

You got it right - Tin both, heat together, repeat.

The fun part isn't soldering the wires to the QD pins, it's getting that damned cable grip together! I wound up flipping both little plates over to get it small enough to grip the RTD wires!

PITA

What a great little connector though!

erik

Recipes 

The wire they provide is 2 reds and a white wire and the pins in their connectors are all numbered 1, 2 & 3.

Stupid question, does it matter which is white, or if the reds cross and connect from 2 on one connector to 3 on the other?

Stupid question #2, do the wires from the RTDs need to connect to the pid in a certain order (I'm thinking hot, neutral, ground).

SweetSounds

Recipes 

The pins in the connector don't matter at all. Just as long as the wires wind up on the correct terminal at the PID.

#2 - Yes, they do. And I can't remember how it went... I'll have to look. (I had to get updated instructions from Auber to get that figured out myself)

Edit - Found it:


Here's a link to their "New" instructions

Walker

Recipes 

I found this easy to do.

The pins on the connector are kind of "U" shaped if you look at them from the end. I put the thing in a vice, heated the pins with my iron and filled them with solder.

Then I laid the wires on top of them and heated the pin up. The solder re-melted and surrounded the wires.

Took about 30 seconds to solder all three of them on.

Also, it does not matter which wire you soldered to which pin.

I didn't even bother checking wire colors when I put mine all together. I bought a probe that essentially had no cable on it, spliced it to a piece of old phone line, soldered that to the connector, and soldered more of it to the other part of the connector.

There are 3 wires, so there are only 6 ways you can connect them to the PID. and only 2 of those 6 will work. I just cycled through the options until the PID started displaying something other than EEEE, screwed them down, and closed the panel up.

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Stickshaker

Recipes 

Buy one of these...http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/nuttinbutgamestuff/items/New_Soldering_Parts_Holder_Hobby_Vise_Helping_Hand s