The conductors do press together on only one side, but that's by design. A properly spec'd and used connector won't overheat, much less damage the shell.
The most likely cause of overheating is a bad contact where the wire is attached to the connector blade. A bad crimp there can produce enough heat to melt the shell in short order if the connector is carrying significant current. Ohmmeter checks aren't a good guide either. At the current an ohmmeter places on the joint, it may show only a small fraction of an ohm resistance, but that contact area may be small enough that, at operational currents, the junction gets very hot. After all, a 1 Amp fuse will show only a tiny amount of resistance on a DMM too, but just try running 10 or 20 Amperes through it! Of course, no one who ever melted an Anderson connector had a "bad crimp" did they? ;-) Again, that's why we recommend soldering in the Elecraft manuals. If you have the *proper* crimp tool and know how to use it, it'll work fine, but soldering will work just as well at the 20 amps or so, max., that an Elecraft rig demands, it's a *lot* cheaper and easier to the average builder to do properly. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- A more specific question ... I'm told that the actual connector/s mate on only one side and therefore can loose tension over time and/or with usage, resulting in less current carrying capacity and overheating at higher current levels, which then melts the housing. 73! Ken Kopp - K0PP [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
