And we’re talking about the smallest and likely most fragile sizes, like these Sopoby white-bands (sizes are color-coded to at least a vague standard). If you dig into the more negative reviews of Amazon’s many solder sleeve brands, a fairly common complaint is how easy it is to overheat (torch) the shrink tube before melting the solder. Therein lies what may be the real issue with this connector design. It’s great that an installer can see the results well, but I wasn’t completely happy with mine (check top photo), and - mainly because one of those 3-wire cables had zero slack available - I was also reluctant to apply more heat and possibly torch the job. Lastly I carefully applied heat to the black and red connectors until the pre-fluxed solder bonded with the wire strands and the adhesive end bands flowed as the tubing shrank, as evident in the blue wire splice. Note how one black wire is already fished through the heat shrink tube and twisted together with its mate, but the connector has not yet been worked along the joined wires to position the solder sleeve over the twisted bare strands, as I have done with the red pair. Here I tried to illustrate the steps required for this type of butt connector, aside from stripping back the two insulating layers.

Three stages of heat shrink solder sleeve wire splicing I’ve vented about thin wire difficulties before, and have also had good luck with 3M Scotchloks and similar mechanical connectors (though several issues came up in the comments to that entry). And while 0183 is slowly going away, many of new boat monitoring systems use various sensors like magnetic door intrusion detectors that work fine with skinny wires, except when you need to splice them. Heck, ABYC E-11 also states that “Conductors shall be at least 16 AWG…” and the smallest Ancor heat shrink butt connector is for 18-22 AWG, but smaller gauge NMEA 0183 wires are still in use on a great many boats. I’d argue that these heat shrink solder connectors with waterproof adhesive provide a lot of mechanical connection beyond the solder, especially when compared to what’s otherwise possible with wire gauges thinner than 22 AWG. The actual wording of the ABYC Standard for Boats E-11 ( excerpted here) goes “Solder shall not be the sole means of mechanical connection in any circuit” and Ed Sherman further suggests the standard’s flexibility in this ABYC blog entry.

These clever connectors are called solder seals by some manufacturers like Wirefy, which is also responsible for this helpful illustration of the various components involved (though the bottom line should read “Starts to melt at 138° C / 280° F”).īefore we get into further details, however, I can almost hear informed readers muttering something like “ Wait a minute, soldered wire connections are not allowed on boats!” That’s only a partial truth as best I can tell. Quantities offered are 5 pieces, 25 pieces and 100 pieces.A Wirefy solder seal wire connector explained These splices are easily crimped using any standard electrical terminal crimping tool. After crimping, non-insulated butt splices should be covered with either electrical tape or heat shrink tubing. These butt splices are made in the USA and are rated to 600 volts and 105☌ (221☏).Īlso available in 8 gauge, 6 gauge, 4 gauge, 2 gauge and 1 gauge for jobs the require bigger wire. The ends are also rolled to help prevent your wire strands from spreading when pushing the wires into the splice. These butt splices have a butted seam with a dimple in the middle that acts as a wire stop when inserting your wires into the ends. If you need a butt splice for a wire or cable large that 10 gauge, check out our larger sized non-insulated butt splices. The smallest size butt splice is for use with 22-18 gauge wire, the next size is for 16-14 gauge wire, and the largest size butt splice is for 12-10 gauge wire.

22-10 Gauge non-insulated butt splices are tin plated copper butt splices without insulation that come in three sizes.

6 gauge butt connectors