With more and more companies providing off-the-shelf components, sensors, motors, and output devices, robotics is increasingly gaining favor with everyday folks. You no longer need a machine shop or a well equipped electronics lab to create sophisticated robots. Robotics has progressed almost to the point of true plug-and-play status. This tutorial is the first step toward making the wires and cables that will be used to plug these sensors and output devices directly to the RAMB or other microcontroller.

The steps that follow will teach you how to crimp and solder end connector pins to bare wires. This is one of those highly practical skills that can significantly increase your enjoyment and success in the field of robotics. For example, building your own sensors, soldering your own circuit boards, and repairing broken electronic components can help keep costs down and spirits up. After all, it feels great to learn new hands-on skills. (And if you are a teacher robotics, I'm sure you know that having enough connectors and jumper wires on hand always seems to be a problem, especially with a lab full of creative students who design increasingly elaborate robotic applications.)

Soldering end connector pins takes some practice and a lot of patience to do properly. (To do it improperly takes virtually no time!) It is not uncommon for beginning students to spend 10 minutes and many tries to properly solder one connector pin to the end of a wire, but after a while some will be able to do it in less than 60 seconds. So take your time and remember that patience is a virtue.

When you're done with this tutorial, you'll want to proceed to the next step and turn your soldered end pins into end connector cables or female jumper wires, which are shown in the images at the top of this page.

Gather Your Materials
Before we begin, gather the necessary tools and supplies.

For this project, we'll need the usual soldering and crimping tools. These are pictured in Figure 1 and include a wire stripper, needle-nose pliers, pin crimper tool, solder, soldering iron, and soldering iron tip cleaner. (See my buying guide for more details about these tools.)

Of course, the end connectors will be connected to wires. The wire can either be solid or stranded. In this tutorial, I will use solid 22 AWG (American Wire Gauge) wire but stranded wire will work just as well. In fact, I try to use stranded wire as often as possible since it won't break like solid wire does when it's bent a number of times. Sometimes, however, I need a rigid wire, and for that the solid wire does the trick.
The length of the wire is unimportant, but they should be approximately the same length. Just for the record, the length of the wires I am using today is about 8cm.

When making cables, you should use wires of different color as shown in Figure 2. Of course, the color of the wire does not affect its electrical properties, but you should follow normal coloring conventions.

End connector pins, shown in Figure 3. (Jameco P/N 100765.) These gold pins are suitable for wire whose guage is between 26 & 22 and can carry a current of 1A.
Until you get comfortable crimping and soldering, you'll need a lot of these! Typically, my beginning students ruin about five connector pins for each one they do correctly. (So if they make two wires each with two end connectors, you'd better have on hand between 20 and 30 end connectors per student!) Each end connector costs approximately $0.10 to $0.14, so it can add up.