Does anyone have any tips on making easy connections to small
 transistors and sensors?

 I am testing my HomeBrewedGlassPanel and have made a couple of sensors
 suitable for engine temperature applications.  I scrounged a few feet of
 wire from a friend who owns a small electronics-related company.  It is
 fiberglass-wrapped 3-conductor teflon-coated stranded wire.  It seems
 ideal for running next to a hot engine. I attempted to create a sensor
 inside a small stainless-steel bolt.  I bored about a 1/4" diameter hole
 axially down the bolt, leaving as thin a layer of SS possible at the tip
 of the bolt to maximize heat transfer. I then soldered the three little
 prongs of the sensor to the ends of each stranded wire, tried my best to
 keep everything from shorting out, and embedded the entire mess in epoxy
 resin, pushing it down inside the stainless-steel bolt as far as
 possible.  One problem ... it doesnt work.  Maybe my $0.76 sensor was
 bad to start with; the output voltage of the sensor makes a big jump
 midrange (around 100F).

 So I quickly made another sensor, this time skipping for now the
 stainless bolt and just fabricated the entire unit out of epoxy. And
 this one works beautifully.

 My real problem is that I find it almost impossible to make a very
 strong soldered connection between the sensor-prongs and the
 teflon-coated wires. Simple lapped soldered joints using a minimum
 amount of solder still take up a lot of room..  Forcing my crude
 solder-joints down inside a small metal tube or hollow bolt is very
 difficult and the results unpredictable.

 Anyone have any suggestion how a guy with 10 thumbs can make 3-wire
 end-to-end splices inside a small metal tube easily, reliably, and
 reasonably fast?

 R.Berglund




A friend of mine (former oil pipeline telemetry engineer) uses extremely
small
heat-shrink tubing over the individual solder joints after carefully
filing each down a bit.
He then uses a larger sleeve of heat-shrink tubing over the three joints
and a section
of wire, that it also doubles for strain relief.  This assembly is
potted into a brass fitting.

rnc

Solder might be questionable depending on the temperature these
connections get exposed to!  That is why welding is preferred.

SD