Quick Help With Some Soldering

[Revan654]

This is my first attempt at soldering anything.

 

I need to solder three 16AWG wiring together (Which will be used for Sata Power & Molex).

 

1. I was just wondering what the best method would be for setting up the wiring. This is what I came up on my own. Not sure if this is good enough to use or if it's wrong.

2. I haven't gotten to soldering bit, I was wondering how much soldering is enough? I assume I should encase the wires I'm soldering together.

 

My Setup:

 

 

I have one wire going from PSU to First hard drive & the second two wires I have wrapped around the first wire which will then run to the second & third hard drive.

 

The Soldering Irons I have:

 

[W-L]

2 minutes ago, Revan654 said:

This is my first attempt at soldering anything.

I need to solder three 16AWG wiring together (Which will be used for Sata Power & Molex).

1. I was just wondering what the best method would be for setting up the wiring. This is what I came up on my own. Not sure if this is good enough to use or if it's wrong.

2. I haven't gotten to soldering bit, I was wondering how much soldering is enough? I assume I should encase the wires I'm soldering together.

My Setup:

I have one wire going from PSU to First hard drive & the second two wires I have wrapped around the first wire which will then run to the second & third hard drive.

The Soldering Irons I have:

That's not a problem twisting like that give it more mechanical strength but just be aware when twisting it's good practice to try and keep the cross sectional area the wire as close to as original as possible to not change the dimension of it. 

 

Can't really see how well the solder has flowed in from the photos but as long as you can still see the strands of wire with solder flowed in your good.

[dany_boy]

For thicker gauge wire, this method works rather nicely:

However I would avoid joining 2 wires altogether if possible.

Cheers!

[SCHISCHKA]

here are some tricks i can think of off the top of my head:

1. dont get too fussy on the way you twist the wire you just want the twist to produce a join small enough you fit your insulation over. for thin wires where it is difficult to do what is shown above, I just twist them together and fold it back.

2. heatshirnk costs money and you dont need to spend money on heatshrink. I often recycle insulation from offcuts. If your calble is short enough you can just slide the insulation down over the join.

3. crimping is a lot faster than soldering. For thick cables we always crimp as the joins is smaller and cleaner. Twisting thick wires is not practical

 

 

[WWicket]

Looks fine. 

6 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

 

2. heatshirnk costs money and you dont need to spend money on heatshrink. I often recycle insulation from offcuts. If your calble is short enough you can just slide the insulation down over the join.

 

 

Heatshrink is almost free... You can buy 1000 precut pieces for $5. Well-worth the money imo.

[Revan654]

15 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

here are some tricks i can think of off the top of my head:

1. dont get too fussy on the way you twist the wire you just want the twist to produce a join small enough you fit your insulation over. for thin wires where it is difficult to do what is shown above, I just twist them together and fold it back.

2. heatshirnk costs money and you dont need to spend money on heatshrink. I often recycle insulation from offcuts. If your calble is short enough you can just slide the insulation down over the join.

3. crimping is a lot faster than soldering. For thick cables we always crimp as the joins is smaller and cleaner. Twisting thick wires is not practical

 

 

 

2. I have allot of heatshrink. That is not an issue.

3. It also means I would have to daisy chain them. Which is a pain to do specially with Sata Power since the wings on the terminals are not large enough to fit two wires. (I'm not going to use T-punch connectors).

 

 

[SCHISCHKA]

6 minutes ago, Revan654 said:

3. It also means I would have to daisy chain them. Which is a pain to do specially with Sata Power since the wings on the terminals are not large enough to fit two wires. (I'm not going to use T-punch connectors).

I think you mean stagger, as in cut the wires at different lengths? I dont see how that is an issue. I never said to use automotive style crimps

[Revan654]

24 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

I think you mean stagger, as in cut the wires at different lengths? I dont see how that is an issue. I never said to use automotive style crimps

 

Nope. I mean Daisy Chain. Who said anything about automotive crimps? I'm using official Sata terminal made by Molex.

[Revan654]

1 hour ago, W-L said:

That's not a problem twisting like that give it more mechanical strength but just be aware when twisting it's good practice to try and keep the cross sectional area the wire as close to as original as possible to not change the dimension of it. 

 

Can't really see how well the solder has flowed in from the photos but as long as you can still see the strands of wire with solder flowed in your good.

 

That's going be the difficult part for me, Atlease until I get soldering down.

 

--------

 

Shame PSU don't give you more Sata ports. I have plenty of VGA slots, only five for sata & molex.

[SCHISCHKA]

27 minutes ago, Revan654 said:

 

Nope. I mean Daisy Chain. Who said anything about automotive crimps? I'm using official Sata terminal made by Molex.

yea we are def using different words for the same thing and the same words for different things.

[Revan654]

14 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

yea we are def using different words for the same thing and the same words for different things.

 

It's wire going from one connector to another to another.

 

 

Like I said previously the main issue is getting two wires inside one sata terminal. It's why I went with soldering method.

 

I could also add a second PSU, not sure I want go down that road just yet.

[Revan654]

16 hours ago, W-L said:

That's not a problem twisting like that give it more mechanical strength but just be aware when twisting it's good practice to try and keep the cross sectional area the wire as close to as original as possible to not change the dimension of it. 

 

Can't really see how well the solder has flowed in from the photos but as long as you can still see the strands of wire with solder flowed in your good.

 

Here is a cleaner photo of my setup.

 

[Revan654]

16 hours ago, dany_boy said:

For thicker gauge wire, this method works rather nicely:

However I would avoid joining 2 wires altogether if possible.

Cheers!

 

I wish that was an option. I only have five slots for Sata & Molex.

 

Harddrives that require Sata Power - 9 | 11

Devices that require Molex Power - 7

 

As you can see that is not an option.

[W-L]

42 minutes ago, Revan654 said:

 

Here is a cleaner photo of my setup.

 

That's alright I would try to taper it a little so to not have a ball or bulged once heatshrinked, you can if you want split the main wire and have the two extra connections twist through the center. Lutro shows that method really well here if you haven't seen @ 14:00

 

[Revan654]

52 minutes ago, W-L said:

That's alright I would try to taper it a little so to not have a ball or bulged once heatshrinked, you can if you want split the main wire and have the two extra connections twist through the center. Lutro shows that method really well here if you haven't seen @ 14:00

 

 

Using that Method This is what I came up with.

 

[W-L]

52 minutes ago, Revan654 said:

 

Using that Method This is what I came up with.

That looks good to me, time to add some solder and heatshrink! 

[SCHISCHKA]

5 hours ago, Revan654 said:

 

It's wire going from one connector to another to another.

 

 

Like I said previously the main issue is getting two wires inside one sata terminal. It's why I went with soldering method.

 

I could also add a second PSU, not sure I want go down that road just yet.

You an buy adapters for this purpose. 

[Revan654]

19 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

You an buy adapters for this purpose. 

If your talking about PSU, I'm aware. Like I said I'm not sure I want to go down that road just yet.

 

Going to do some quick soldering test, If I'm not happy with the results I might looking into adding another PSU. I do have a spare 850 P2 PSU sitting around.

[Marshnt]

Any thing will work in a low stress environment but their are far better ways of doing this. A free source for standards https://nepp.nasa.gov/index.cfm/5511