Standards Development

Scope

This part of IEC 60352 is applicable to solderless crimped connections made with:

– appropriately designed uninsulated closed crimp barrels,

– stranded wires of nominal cross-sectional area above 10 mm2 up to 300 mm2 (included) or

– solid wires of diameter above 3,7 mm up to 19,8 mm (included) for use in electrical and electronic equipment and devices

NOTE 1 The above minimum and maximum diameters of solid wires (class 1) are in line with IEC 60228:2004 Table C.1 (informative).

NOTE 2 Closed crimp barrels are usually part of removable crimp contacts for single pole or multipole electrical connectors, terminal ends, or splices.

Information on the materials and data from industrial experience is included in addition to the test procedures to provide electrically stable connections under prescribed environmental conditions.

This part of IEC 60352 is not intended to be applicable to crimping of coaxial cables provide a means of comparing test results when the tools used to make the connections are of different designs or manufacture.

Purpose

Due to the ongoing global shift to an “all-electric” society and the correspondingly rising electric power requirement, crimped connections made with crimp barrels and wire sizes larger than those covered by IEC 60352-2, which stops at 10 mm2, are increasingly used in many industrial and civil applications. These cover transmission and conversion of electric energy in building installations, rail transportation, renewable energy generation.

IEC SC 48B/WG 6 Connection technologies agreed to develop a companion part to the IEC 60352-2 document, dedicated to large size crimped connections. Further discussion led to agree to cover, in the first edition of this new document, only uninsulated closed crimp barrels which, for the intended size range, are mostly of the machined type.

Other TCs, such as IEC TC 9, already cover in informative way such crimped connections sizes e.g. for the installation of cabling in railway rolling stock (IEC 62995). This proposed standard has the purpose to determine the suitability of large-sized crimped connections, under specified mechanical, electrical and environmental conditions and to provide a means of comparing test results when the tools used to make the connections are of different designs or manufacture.

As not all applications are demanding the stresses encountered e.g. in transportation, this standard aims at covering both a harsh environment performance level (PL1) with pull-out force requirements derived from IEC TC 20 standard IEC 61238-1-1 and end-use class C equipment as defined in IEC 60352-2 forthcoming ED3, and a mild environment performance level (PL2), covering end-use applications for class A and class B equipment, PL2 using the pull-out force requirements of a popular regional standard such as ANSI/UL 486A-486B, which is already a reference for most products on the market.