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I use a soldering aid, some people call them "helping hands" works great no matter what your soldering
You can get them at Radio Shack and/or just about anywhere.
-Kevin

I have those, but they never seem to have either firm enough grip or enough weight to prevent the arms from moving even with relatively little pushing. Also, with the cheaper ones (at least the one I have), the ball-joints where the alligator clips articulate wear out and loosen, and cannot be tightened.

But that's just me griping. If I had a choice between connectors requiring such a tool or some that don't, I'd go with the latter. Makes life simpler.

Yup I have a set of the helping hands also but the few times i have used them they did move around a lot so i just went back to a pair of needle nose vise grips set to lightly hold the part and if it moves I just put them in my vise. I dont know it works for me and remember if all else fails use a BFH

I stopped using Deans for a while now. I only use XT-60 connectors, they are quite cheap and really good. The also work really well with bigger gauge wire.

Those do look good maybe when I go to a bigger wire size I will use them. What would use anything bigger than 12 gauge wire I thought 12 gauge was pretty big, isnt it?

Does anyone use Traxxas connectors?

I like the XT60 connectors too, except for a couple minor things...the good: they can take 12GA and larger wires, and it's impossible to reverse-connect them, and they're easy to solder due to the connectors having round cup ends. The not-so-good: they require heat-shrinking (a piddly detail) and most importantly--they're yellow. Besides brown, yellow might just be my least favorite color.

I happened upon this forum thread elsewhere that discusses EC3's vs. Deans and also some guys who managed to use 10GA wires with EC3's...it ain't easy. But I have to concur with the people who Dissed the Deans, they reiterate some of the Deans disadvantages that I don't like.

http://www.wattflyer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44746

Isnt 12 gauge about as big as you would use? what would use anything bigger than 12?

Dusted wrote:Isnt 12 gauge about as big as you would use? what would use anything bigger than 12?

EC5 connectors. EC3's use 3.5mm bullet connectors (not 3mm) and EC5's use 5mm bullets.

Dusted wrote:Isnt 12 gauge about as big as you would use? what would use anything bigger than 12?

lots of lipos come with 8 and 10 gauge wires, so you'd need deans or ec5's.

Thank you all for the responses It gets very confusing and sometimes the more you read the more confused you get

One of the annoyances of the EC3's (and presumably EC5's too) is that it can be quite a challenge to get the metal bullets to "snap" into the plastic housings. However, I found a technique which really helped make this step easier...just before I insert the connector into the plastic, I warm up the metal bullet for a few seconds with a heat gun to warm it up. They pop into the housings much easier that way.

Dusted wrote:Thank you all for the responses It gets very confusing and sometimes the more you read the more confused you get

And sometimes it comes down to personal preference. There's not really anything wrong with most of the suggestions listed, use what you can get your hands on and what you feel comfortable soldering. As far as one working better than the others (for the suggestions mentioned,) they're all decent. I use Dean's on everything, because I still have a ton and was using them back when that was the only decent plug my LHS carried.

Coming from a racing background, I'm still entertained by ANY plug discussions... for years I took abuse at the track for having connectors instead of directly soldering my nicad/nimh packs every time in and out of the car. Now all those same people run lipos and... all use plugs.

I was wondering about soldering directly to motor etc but I really wanted to have the ease of removing and replacing the LiPos since I read on here that you shouldnt charge a pack more than once a day. so makes sense to use connectors to me