Professional BoatBuilder - December-January 2018

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 45

o en added to these terminals. If even

a tiny corner of heat shrink extends

into the conducting surface, and even

if the connector is torqued down hard

in a bolted connection, the connection

can be resistive enough to generate a

great deal of heat—more than enough

to instantly burn  ngertips.

varying in copper thickness and diam-

eter. If the cables and terminals are not

properly matched to each other and to

the dies in the crimper, poor crimps

will result. I have pulled 1/0 terminals

o their cables by hand a er they had

been crimped with a mismatched die

in a hydraulic crimper. Heat shrink is

we commonly use stainless steel—a

metal with very poor electrical con-

ductivity—to bolt these connections

together. If the stainless becomes part

of the conducting circuit with high

continuous currents, it can become

hot enough to create a  re risk.  ere

is nothing wrong with using the stain-

less; you just have to make sure that it

is being used only to clamp one con-

ducting surface directly to another.

Even a stainless washer between the

two can cause problems.

At high amperage levels, the termi-

nals themselves can be problematic.

 ey are invariably crimped, and for a

given stranded cable size (gauge) there

are variations in the diameter of the

copper depending on the standard

used for sizing (SAE, AWG, or ISO)

and the number of strands in the cable.

 at leaves the installer or service

technician with half-a-dozen di erent

types of copper crimp-on terminals,

Imperfect connections can also generate

high heat. If, for example, heat shrink runs

onto a conducting surface (left), resistance

in the connection can generate enough heat

to instantly burn a technician’s  ngertips

(above).

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