Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is subjective, but I am looking for other people's experience.
If I am going to screw eight wires into a daughter relay board's terminal block, is there a benefit or advantage to tinning the copper end before?
The environment that the units are to be installed is not near the coast and is not normally damp/wet. Rather dry and hot.
You MUST NOT fully tin the copper wires to be inserted into a screw down terminal block - that your days may be long on the face of the land.
It is permissible to tin the tip to maintain the wire shape.
The minimum possible amount of copper should be tinned.
Any competent regulatory authority will have this requirement as a rule in their system (see below)
The reason for the prohibition is that when you fully tin a multistrand wire fully, the solder wicks between the strands of copper and forms a solid block, part of whose volume is metallic solder. When you clamp the solder and copper bundle you tighten the screw or clamp against the solder block, and in time the solder metal "creeps" under the compressive forces and the join loses tension. The wire can then either pull out or cause a high resistance connection with heating.
This is a genuine real-world issue and is covered by genuine real-world regulations in many countries.
If you want to do your installation a favor, use wire ferrules:
Image source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aderendh%C3%BClse?uselang=de
Do not, ever, tin the wires. A tinned wire will slowly give way to the screw's pressure and eventually become loose. The contact resistance will rise. In the worst case, your contact will become hot and cause fire.
If you don't have wire ferrules at hand, just twist the stranded wire before putting it into the terminal block. While not recommended because some strands might cause shorts to neighboring terminals, this will still be far better and reliable than a tinned wire.
If they're stranded wires: don't tin them! The tinned whole will be soft and the screw will become loose in no time. Instead crimp a ferrule on them.
Also for solid wire I don't think tinning is needed. Think about it: have you ever seen electrical wiring in a house where the 2.5mm\$^2\$ or 4mm\$^2\$ wires were tinned before fixing into the wiring cabinet? Yet these connections are used in all kinds of environments and for tens of years.
I have learned my lesson on soldering a stranded wire (1950's thinking)exiting a transfer switch for better contact in screw terminal. Was under constant 25-30 amp load and finally blew out and burned wires right off at that screw terminal. Other similar treatment showed loose wire screws after 3 years in my RV.
I have just now instead used a single 6" copper 10ga wire in and out of the screw terminals on transfer switch and the pigtailed with twist-on connector to the stranded 10 ga. Could be the new push in flip down tab connectors would have been more positive connection than the twist-on but even those only "bite" into a small portion of the inserted wires.
According to https://www.ipc.org
If you go here - IPC-A-610E-2010, Acceptability of Electronic Assemblies, April 2010
Supersedes IPC-A-610D.
On page 4-10 under section 4.1.4.2 Hardware Installation – Threaded Fasteners - Wires
Near the bottom which states "tinned wires" as a defect.
