On 07/17/20 8:50 AM, jimlux wrote:
Did anyone look at the M&P ( Italy) site ?
I've been involved for 20+ years with several divisions of what was
CDT ( Mohawk, Montrose, West Penn Wire etc) now merged into Belden
Corp. Observed many braiding & bunching machines in operation. I
always understood that many of the best fabricating machines in the
wire industry were made in Italy. I drew a conclusion that coax form
ITALY very well could be the best. That said , I watched several coax
connector assembly videos provided BY M&P , and was surprised to see
they suggest you do NOT solder the shield on either N type for PL-259.
They must believe that the compression is adequate. Why do I think
that could be a warming while running that EXPERT KW ??????
I think there's ample info out there that says that compression
connections (if properly made) are far superior to soldered connections.
The challenge is the "properly made" - I've not done big 1/2" coax, just
RG-58, microwave semi-rigid and regular old stranded wire. For all of
those, if you have the right tool, it's easy to make a good compression
connection that is gas tight, stands up to temperature cycling and
vibration, etc. I would imagine that the bigger connectors and cables
are the same.
However, it requires tooling specifically for your application, it isn't
necessarily cheap, and so forth. If you're doing a few connectorsa
month or year, as a hobby, it's hard to justify several hundred bucks
for a set of tools to cover all connectors and cable sizes. I think
that's where soldering has its place (or ordering premade cables!)
When I was making dozens of cables in a day - it was easily worth the
money, especially for the RG58 BNCs for Thin Ethernet. Spin the stripper
around the cable, load the ferrule and connector, crimp, done. If it
took 30 seconds it was probably because I was distracted. Same if
you're doing F connectors on RG-6 or RG-59. There's no way I could have
soldered on a connector that fast, especially if I had to wait for the
iron to heat. And, in any case, that horrible polyethylene dielectric
would have melted.
_______________________________________________
One needs to differentiate between crimp connectors and compression
connectors.
The true compression connectors are considered the most reliable. They
are available for most common cable types, but not all connector types.
They are widely used on
1) CATV RG59, RG6, RG11 (F connectors)
2) Braided, solid center conductor cable (LMR-195-240-400) (N, 7-16 DIN)
3) Heliax style cable, all sizes, both regular & superflex style (N,
7-16 DIN, 4.3-10 DIN)
Compression connectors have excellent strain relief & weatherproofing
properties.
Crimp connectors work very well, but with those I pay particular
attention to strain relief by using at least two layers of heatshrink
with staggered lengths.
-Steve K8LX
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