Timeline for Are soldered electrical connections code-compliant?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 21 at 5:55 | comment | added | WorBlux | Solder joint aren't weak at the solder point, nor is solder particularly brittle in the scheme of things. The issue is that it there is a discontinuity between the flex of the copper and the flex of the solder. The difference in material properties leads to a stress concentration in the wire right at the transition into the solder joint. If not mechanically secure the wire tends to break at the stress riser right at the interface of the solder rather than to solder breaking. | |
| Feb 28 at 7:14 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Feb 28 at 12:51 | |||||
| Jul 8, 2020 at 1:21 | comment | added | RustyShackleford | So what about a surge protection device, that mounts into a knockout in the main panel ? The wires are not long enough (to reach the ground bar and main breaker) and I'd like to simply extend them with soldered connections and heat-shrink tubing (so as not to clutter up the box with 3 wire nuts). | |
| Dec 6, 2019 at 16:57 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | @EricSimpson: If the vinyl tape wrapping was done, the the tension of your pulling may well have gone through the tape and avoided putting any tension on the joint itself. | |
| Dec 4, 2019 at 20:43 | comment | added | Nate S. | Think of it like this: copper wire is a bit like plastic; quite soft and not especially strong but will not easily break when you bend it. Solid solder is more like glass; it is hard and durable up to a point, but you can't bend it very far at all before it shatters. | |
| Dec 4, 2019 at 20:40 | comment | added | Nate S. | It's not always weak, just brittle -- it won't handle bending well at all. The way you used it, it sounds like was only putting tension on it, which it can handle reasonably well. But also, it has a tendency to form microscopic cracks which aren't easy to see with the naked eye, but will still cause high resistance spots, so if you'd used the wire again after doing that, you might have found it failed rapidly. | |
| Dec 4, 2019 at 20:34 | comment | added | Eric Simpson | I would disagree about solder inherently providing a weak mechanical connection. I recently replaced some old wiring in my house where two 14ga wires were simply overlapped about 3" - not even twisted together - and soldered. The joint was then wrapped with vinyl electrical tape. I used the old wires to pull in new NM cable and ended up pulling the old wire in two, but the solder joint held just fine. A twisted and soldered joint could be even stronger than the simple lap joint. | |
| Dec 3, 2019 at 19:04 | history | answered | Nate S. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |