Hi! I’m building my first saber and have come to what feels like a silly question but can’t find an answer. I am building a saber that will be running a sabertec quantum blade, and so I’m currently wiring up all my power pos and negs to be 20awg.
My inexperienced question is, how does one actually solder a wire gauge that large into the pins on the board? It doesn’t fit through the hole and I can’t find anywhere the correct method. Do I need to split each line into smaller wires to connect to the board? This seems like it’s not the right answer and I’m missing something rather simple. (I’m fairly new to soldering, just have some simple practice boards under my belt)
Thanks for any help!
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Short answer: you probably don’t want to do that.
If you really need or want to use wires that thick, there are a few things you can do to work around it:
- Snip off a couple of the strands and solder the rest to the board. (Just make sure the snipped strands don’t short to anything else.)
- If you’re soldering to the LED terminals, split the strands in two, twist each half together, then thread each half through it’s own hole (LED2 and LED3 for instance.)
- Solder the wire to the surface rather than thread it through the hole.
In most cases it’s probably easier to use a thinner wire, and two separate wires if you need it.
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Thanks so much for the reply! I will reconsider and probably use 2x22 instead.
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20awg is overkill for most things as you can get the same current carrying capacity by doubling up.
For example, if Batt+ goes direct to the neopixel blade connector, you can use 20awg easily because battery and neo connections are surface connections, and you won’t need that wire to touch the proffie at all. Then you only need a 26awg split to go to batt+ on the Proffie as the positive is going direct to the blade.
The negative however does need to be the full rating at the Proffie, but this can be easily achieved as you have two Batt- pads, so you can run 2 x 22awg wires from Batt- to the Proffie, i.e. one to each neg pad. That gives you plenty of current carrying capacity without the hassle or risk of peeling strands off a 20.
Then you can likewise use 2 x 22awg for the LED negs - one from each Proffie pad to the neo connector.
In other words there are plenty of ways to skin the same cat in Proffie-land! LOL! 
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In my testing the quantum doesn’t draw as much as people think. it’s pretty good on power. Here’s the testing for all three of the new generation blades (by the way the tritium sucks, don’t buy one.) Sabertec and KR are both fantastic.
Tritium (TCSS blade components)
G - 5.8A - 9300 lm
B - 5.7A - 3300 lm
R - 6.2A - 5600 lm
W - 10.2A - 13000 lm
V - 6.5A - 4800 lm
Y - 9.3A - 11600 lm
Sabertec Quantum (TCSS blade components)
G - 4.7A - 8900 lm
B - 4.7A - 2750 lm
R - 4.7A - 5100 lm
W - 9.4A - 11600 lm
V - 5.2A - 4000 lm
Y - 7.3A - 10900 lm
KR Pixel Stick v3 (TCSS blade components)
G - 6.9A - 11000 lm
B - 6.9A - 3900 lm
R - 6.9A - 6000 lm
W - 12.5A - 13100 lm
V - 8.1A - 5300 lm
Y - 11.2A - 12500 lm
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oh of course! There’s a second Batt- I can use! That will make things much easier. Thanks for pointing that out!
I plan on doing basically what you’ve pitched but with a kill switch between the Batt+ and Proffie. I have already wired up that line to be a single 22awg.
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Wow thanks! This is really useful. I went with the quantum. Looking forward to it all coming together!
I’ve been primarily using 18-20awg for years (mostly because back then I used the 3-4 sided pixel blades of spacewindu). 20awg PTFE can actually fit the holes on most of my 2.2’s and 3.9’s out of KR and Tritium. Aliexpress ones nope.
People will say it’s overkill. It is for V2 sticks and regular strip blades. Quantums are more efficient (probably even more than v2’s) Really just needed if you want to do pure white (which I often do).
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I’m another “overkill” person with high-amp blades. I run 18awg or 2x20/21awg* from batt+ to the pcb and 24 awg from batt+ to the proffieboard (through the kill switch). For batt-, I always run 2x 20/21awg solid core wire to the two through holes on the proffieboard. The 20/21awg solid core wire works great with the through holes, and no issues with stray strands. I also use 2x 20awg solid core wire for LED23 and LED4 for the main blade–the solid core wire also makes it easy to bridge LED23 by bending over the wire.
For through holes, I always use solid core wire–I’ve had issues with stray strands. For soldering to pads, on chassis connectors or blade connector, I prefer solid core for smaller wires and stranded for larger—but I stick with solid core if either connection is a through hole.
*The PTFE solid core 20awg wire I get is a narrow and measures closer to 21awg.
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