Anderson Crimp

Anderson/Powerpole Connectors;

Great for anything that inputs/outputs power on the robot , wire gauge is 10-20 AWG

(Powerpole Starter Kit - AndyMark, Inc)

The first step in crimping and creating Anderson connections is to strip the wire of its insulation. 

We typically use this wire stripper on the correct section for the specific Anderson gauge. 

Once the wire is stripped, you want to prepare your Anderson crimp for the copper conductor.

It should be something like this: 

From there, you want to take your Anderson wire crimper and put it into the middle setting, there's a tiny 30 over the middle.

Note: Our team has used mainly the middle setting for our wiring, though we have noticed less durability past 22 AWG

In assist to your crimping of Anderson crimps, some electrical students on our team have adopted the method of “prefiring” which includes putting the crimp inside the crimper and then inserting the wire. Any method of crimping is fine as long as the wire is completely inside the crimp, the crimp does not have any insulation inside, and the crimp is inside the crimper during the time of connection.

“Prefiring”:

Note: Prefiring is a method that can execute poorly if misaligned, be sure to use what is comfortable but effective for you

Regardless of method chosen for Anderson crimping, your wire should look like this:

From there, you move onto putting the crimp into housing.

Make sure that your crimp is going inside the housing to look something like this and at this orientation. 

From there, push into the housing and you should hear a little snap when it goes into place. 

Afterwards, be sure to have someone pull test your connection, YOU NEED TO DO THIS!

Finished result:

What NOT to do:

Strands of wire are out everywhere, and the crimp is not encapsulating all the wire strands.

In this picture, the crimp flag is out, leaving wire exposed and a bad connection.

AVOID LEAVING WIRE EXPOSED AND POOR CONNECTIONS TO THE CRIMP!