Who needs solder between alligator clips and the wire?

[tooki]

Pomona and Cal-Test sell (fine strand ~0.07mm) silicone jacket copper wire about $1/ft. Boots will still be PVC.
Neither company make jumpers and I think I'd emailed Pomona and gave them shit for not offering some quality.

FYI, I have tried both of these brands' silicone test lead wire. The Pomona is nice (not the finest stranding in existence, but very nice insulation), but not available in small sizes.

The (now discontinued) 24AWG Cal-Test I tried is awful. It is silicone, but it's not at all good for test leads: it "takes a set" quite strongly (i.e. it has strong memory of bends, twists, and kinks) and is not limp like you want in a test lead. It is worse in this regard than the inexpensive Chinese silicone from my non-preferred supplier. The Chinese silicone from my preferred supplier is far, far better still.

And to be clear, it is the insulation that has the strong memory, not the copper stranding within. Even the stripped insulation pieces can be bent.

[jrmymllr]

Pic of new TSIN TLA-2 jumpers from Japan. I looked at my old jumpers and I also have some made in Korea with circle-J logo and the double-crimp as well.
I'd tried Adafruit, Cinch, Emerson, GC Electronics and not happy with them.
Enough with this chinese junk I say. If it isn't the dodgy "crimp", it's the scrawny wire, it's the plastics. Hoorah you've won the race to the bottom!

Pomona and Cal-Test sell (fine strand ~0.07mm) silicone jacket copper wire about $1/ft. Boots will still be PVC.
Neither company make jumpers and I think I'd emailed Pomona and gave them shit for not offering some quality.

Ooh that's nice. How did you get these? Google is of no help if there's anywhere in NA that sells them.

[Kim Christensen]

Ooh that's nice. How did you get these? Google is of no help if there's anywhere in NA that sells them.

Maybe these guys?

[floobydust]

Ooh that's nice. How did you get these? Google is of no help if there's anywhere in NA that sells them.

I begged an engineer friend travelling to Osaka to get me some. Near his hotel Kyohritsu Electronic Industry Co., Ltd is the parent company.
There are electronics hobbyist stores (buildings) there everything from 300B's and audiophile stuff, to surplus components and maker stuff. All top quality and drool over the test leads and clips china can never achieve. Really wish that kind of store could exist in North America, without the crazy markup as the pdf shows.
Imagine test clips that simply work and make a good connection.

Japanese manufacturers are terrible at selling their stuff outside of the country. An antique honour system and really they are only about their local market it seems.

[jrmymllr]

Ooh that's nice. How did you get these? Google is of no help if there's anywhere in NA that sells them.

I begged an engineer friend travelling to Osaka to get me some. Near his hotel Kyohritsu Electronic Industry Co., Ltd is the parent company.
There are electronics hobbyist stores (buildings) there everything from 300B's and audiophile stuff, to surplus components and maker stuff. All top quality and drool over the test leads and clips china can never achieve. Really wish that kind of store could exist in North America, without the crazy markup as the pdf shows.
Imagine test clips that simply work and make a good connection.

Japanese manufacturers are terrible at selling their stuff outside of the country. An antique honour system and really they are only about their local market it seems.

[MarginallyStable]

My work gave us an emergency roadside kit that came with jumper cables that had a fold-over crimp like this.
Apparently at least one person used them and ended up with severe burns on their hands. My work instructed everyone to throw the cables away and gave us some coupon as a replacement....

I still have the cables around somewhere.

[pcprogrammer]

My work gave us an emergency roadside kit that came with jumper cables that had a fold-over crimp like this.
Apparently at least one person used them and ended up with severe burns on their hands. My work instructed everyone to throw the cables away and gave us some coupon as a replacement....

I still have the cables around somewhere.

 

Just yesterday and today I had to use my jumper cables to help start the van of the people that are installing the new heat pump. Yesterday no problems and the van started after a little bit of charging its battery. Today it did not do anything, so I brought out the trusted multi meter and it showed a lower voltage on the van battery than on mine, so indeed connection problems. Measured the resistance of the cables. The red one was fine <1 Ohm, but the black one had no connectivity until I jiggled one end a bit. Finally got the van going again, and told them to visit a garage to replace the battery. Don't want to jump start it again tomorrow. 

The moral of the story, yes the same type of crimping on the big alligator clips, and a bad connection on the copper strand. The clip is steel, but the cable is non magnetic, so either real copper or copper cladded aluminum.

Problem with these clips is that you can't solder to them, at least not easily. I removed the cable from the clip and had to pry the strands out of the insulation. Stripped a larger section and crimped the clip back on. Hopefully it will work again when needed.

[mikerj]

Matthias just made a video about crappy alligator clip test leads:
 

[vk6zgo]

Back in the day, some higher quality alligator clips from Australia, the UK & USA had a threaded hole formed in the clip body to connect the conductor, & only the insulator was clamped.
Ideally, a lug would be soldered to the conductor, but many were the connections which just tinned it, bent it into a semi-circle & tightened the screw down on it.
Even such a "bodge" was more reliable than just hoping that folding it over & crimping it with the insulation would be adequate.

[jrmymllr]

Matthias just made a video about crappy alligator clip test leads:

That was super helpful. I can report the cheap Digikey clip lead wires are not iron. So I only need to do soldering and not replace the wires.

[Kean]

That was super helpful. I can report the cheap Digikey clip lead wires are not iron. So I only need to do soldering and not replace the wires.

It depends on your use case.  For simple hobby/educational circuits they are probably fine even with the CCS wire.
But you might experience a noticeable voltage drop with the super fine gauge copper wire they will use to save money, even at what most would consider low current.
I do prefer to make my own test leads, usually with silicone insulated wire.  It doesn't take too much time, and can save lots of frustration later.

[jrmymllr]

That was super helpful. I can report the cheap Digikey clip lead wires are not iron. So I only need to do soldering and not replace the wires.

It depends on your use case.  For simple hobby/educational circuits they are probably fine even with the CCS wire.
But you might experience a noticeable voltage drop with the super fine gauge copper wire they will use to save money, even at what most would consider low current.
I do prefer to make my own test leads, usually with silicone insulated wire.  It doesn't take too much time, and can save lots of frustration later.

While in the process of disassembling these so I can solder the wire to the clip, I discovered they are CCA. Nope. I'm replacing the wire and never buying cheapo clip leads again.

[5U4GB]

Anyone know what the Jaycar test leads are?  Yeah, I know, Jaycar, but I can pick a set up tomorrow vs. waiting to get silicone wire in and then crimping/soldering it up.

I also had a look at element14 and even their Multicomp house brand leads start at $5-6 apiece, and that's before you get into the name-brand stuff like Pomona which is several times that.  However as with the Aliexpress ones none of the data sheets make a point of specifying that the cable is copper.

[Kean]

Anyone know what the Jaycar test leads are?  Yeah, I know, Jaycar, but I can pick a set up tomorrow vs. waiting to get silicone wire in and then crimping/soldering it up.

I cannot vouch for latest stock, but I have some Jaycar ones I bought 5+ years ago and they are not CCS (non magnetic).  I am pretty sure they are real copper, and the 3A rating is a good sign.  But they are not particularly well terminated, with just the folded over wires crimped between insulation and metal alligator clip.  And that has tripped me up with them more than once, but apparently I haven't gone through and fixed them all... yet...

I ran a magnet over a few bunches of cables that came from AliExpress, and the only ones that registered are some short "Dupont" jumper leads.
I did throw away a bunch of cheap banana to alligator leads, as they had significant voltage drop.  I cannot recall if they were CCS or CCA, but the strands were few and very thin.

[5U4GB]

Thanks!  I wrote to Cleqee, mentioned in this post, about their use of CCS but haven't had a reply yet.  Everything else I've got from them has been fine so I'm assuming a supply-chain problem rather than systematic use of CCS.

For people complaining about Chinese-made junk, some years ago an acquaintance of mine was working with an organisation that used stupidly expensive hardware made in the USA and certified to strict USG standards.  It got to the point where they had to open the units up and inspect each one to verify that they had actually been made to the standard they'd been certified to.  So it doesn't just happen with Chinese products, you can get caught anywhere, any time.

[5U4GB]

Cleqee replied to say they'd provide feedback to the factory, not sure what that'll entail in practice but at least they acknowledged the issue.

[5U4GB]

I cannot vouch for latest stock, but I have some Jaycar ones I bought 5+ years ago and they are not CCS (non magnetic).

I can vouch for the latest stock:



It's definitely CCS (the shiny cylinder hanging off the cables is a fridge-magnety-thing).  Looks like Jaycar got scammed as well.

Which means anyone else who has hookup cables, no matter what the source, from the last five years or so may want to run a magnet over them...

[5U4GB]

And by happy coincidence:



Be interesting to see if they read their feedback and respond.

[Doctorandus_P]

I have bought wires made like this over 30 years ago, so it's nothing new. And indeed quality was quite crappy. Even back then the amount of copper in them varied a lot. From ridiculously thin to reasonable. But at least the wire was copper back then.

I opened up the crimped part, soldered the wire to the clamp and then put the insulated piece back in the crimped part for mechanical endurance.

Another issue is the sleeves over the crocodile clamps hardening up to the point the clamps can't even be opened anymore.

[OriginalDan]

so it seems 2.54 pin headers are effected... i bought a bunch of pi picos recently and some spare pinheaders i had from other pi products the yellow colour ones aren't magnetic but a generic bulk lot i got from ali are, problem is i already soldered about 10 of em down half being the cheaper ali stuff
is that gonna cause problems down the road?

[Kean]

is that gonna cause problems down the road?

The most noticeable effect is going to be lower current carrying capacity.  If you are only using these wires for digital signals or low power devices, it isn't likely to be an issue.

With the croc clips, they are often used to hook up higher power devices - so their use of CCA/CCS, very thin wire strands, and poor crimping, are more likely to mess up your circuits due to wires overheating, significant voltage drop, or intermittent connections.

[5U4GB]

And by happy coincidence:

(Attachment Link)

Be interesting to see if they read their feedback and respond.

Well it's now been three weeks and not a peep from Jaycar.  You wonder why they ask for feedback if they don't read it.

[garrettm]

I've encountered generally four different mating methods:

1) a brass ferrule is crimped on the stripped wire and then the ferrule is crimped to the barrel of the alligator clip
2) the stripped wire is wrapped around a mounting screw on the underside of the alligator clip
3) the stripped wire is soldered to the clip inside the little opening on the underside near the screw hole
4) the stripped wire is bent parallel to the jacket and that whole length is crimped to the barrel of the alligator clip (which is what you have)

Pomona and Mueller Electronics used method 1, but they have both gone down in quality immensely over the years.

Most older clips used method 2.

Anyways, if you want something done "right" you have to do it yourself. It's actually pretty easy to fix these clips: Just pull the wire out and then restrip and solder the wire to the clip using the slot on the underside. I also crimp the jacket to the barrel and add a spacer if the jacket is a little too small to crimp properly. This prevents rotation of the wire inside the barrel.

The brass ferrules are low resistance, but fail if the jacket is too short to fit properly inside the barrel--causing the strands to snap off near the ferrule. The soldering method works fine though, as the jacket has plenty of room in the barrel to prevent the strands from flexing too much and the soldered strands are far enough away from the part that flexes. The screw method is similar and works well, but adds bulk to the clip and doesn't look as nice.

Whoever complained about soldering melting the wire jacket has never made a clip using that method. Yes, a tiny and insignificant amount of jacket may melt, but the part that is near the end of the barrel is fine and so it doesn't matter. If you pre-tin the wire and use good flux with a high heat soldering iron, the solder joint can be made fast enough that the jacket near the joint is negligibly impacted.