On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 16:05:36 -0800, "Lynn Coffelt"
wrote:

A good deal of modern boat electronics wiring is connected to terminal
blocks by sticking the end of the wire into a hole where a screw-down clamp
holds the wire in place. It always looked like a not too smart idea to me,
but they neglected to ask me when the equipment was being designed.
My question is: How do you experts treat the wire ends that go into the
terminal block holes?

Europeans frequently use these compression terminals (Phoenix,
Weidmuller and other make nice terminal block systems using them), and
use ferrules (sp?) on the wires - metal sleeves, possibly with a
plastic part to go over the wire insulation - the ferrules are crimped
on the wire, before inserting the wire in the terminal, and make a
very neat installation. The normal ferrules do make it difficult to
get two wires in a terminal, but there are ferrules designed
specifically to handle two wires (I've never used them myself.)

These ferrules and crimp tools are available from Digikey, Newark and
others.

These European terminal block systems make really nice assemblies -
much nicer than our usual barrier blocks. With the optional parts
that allow you to bridge terminals, you can make quite fancy
distribution systems. See
http://members.shaw.ca/peterbb/dinblock.html

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
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