Anderson SB120 to XT60

[MCtree]

I don’t have the tools because, honestly, I’m a bit leery to try my hand at soldering. I feel it’s something I would screw up.

As for why I have the SB120… this is a good question. It is, indeed, overkill.
I guess I prefer the SB120 to the SB50 because the largest wire I could get on a SB50 assembly from Powerwerx was 6GA. But if I went with the SB120, I could get 4GA.
And because I already have 4GA from my engine-bay back to the cargo areas, I wanted to maintain this gauge for as long as I could - even if it’s for only 3 feet after the bus block. (As seen in my diagram in post 16).

The most that wire should see is 40 amps. You think 6GA is sufficient?
Looking at the blue sea gauge/length chart, it does seem like I do have some cushion, but I don’t want to cut it too close.

 

[e9999]

It's not that difficult to do decent soldering, actually. Just any DIYer should be able to do that with minimal practice. Give it a try. A useful skill to know.

If you think that wire will see 40A, what about the 10AWG then? I'd be more concerned about that than about the 4 vs 6.

 

[MCtree]

It's not that difficult to do decent soldering, actually. Just any DIYer should be able to do that with minimal practice. Give it a try. A useful skill to know.

If you think that wire will see 40A, what about the 10AWG then? I'd be more concerned about that than about the 4 vs 6.

Thanks for the faith in my potential soldering skills! Maybe I will give it a try.

The wire should only see the 40A when I have the Victron connected to the SB120 Anderson plug. When I don’t have the victron connected and have the 10ga wire attached to the SB120, it shouldn’t see more than 15 amps. I plan to put a 15A in-line fuse into that part of it.
Does that make sense?

 

[e9999]

If you have 40A going into the Victron, you'll have something similar coming out of it, and it shows 10AWG there in your diagram.

 

[MCtree]

I thought if I increased the voltage, as that victron does, it reduces the amps. V*A=W.

Also, the max amps out of that victron is 15a.

My planning was that the 10ga wire would only see 15A.

Have I thought about this erroneously?

 

[e9999]

it is true that if you increase the voltage through the DC-DC that will reduce the amps, but if you go from a 12V battery to charging a 12V battery, the difference in voltage may be around 2V or so, so not a big difference, and the amps won't go down more than about 15% on the downstream side.
Conversely, If the max output of the victron is 15A you won't have the 40A upstream that you mentioned.
And, yes, if the victron can only put out 15A then the 10AWG should be fine there. Of course, you'd want to recheck all that if you replace the Victron with something more powerful at some point.
And, yes, YES, fuses or breakers everywhere! (If you value your truck...)

 

[MCtree]

it is true that if you increase the voltage through the DC-DC that will reduce the amps, but if you go from a 12V battery to charging a 12V battery, the difference in voltage may be around 2V or so, so not a big difference, and the amps won't go down more than about 15% on the downstream side.
Conversely, If the max output of the victron is 15A you won't have the 40A upstream that you mentioned.
And, yes, if the victron can only put out 15A then the 10AWG should be fine there. Of course, you'd want to recheck all that if you replace the Victron with something more powerful at some point.
And, yes, YES, fuses or breakers everywhere! (If you value your truck...)

I should have said that the point of the Victron is to increase the voltage into the Ecolflow. It’s a DC to DC converter.
It is supposed to increase the voltage of the 12v from my battery to 24v going into the Ecoflow. But, in practice, I have measured 30v at times coming out of it.

And thanks! I guess I will put a fuse in the 10ga wire right after the SB120 Anderson connector. I have been following the “put fuses everywhere” logic but wanted to make sure I wasn’t being overly cautious.

 

[e9999]

sorry, missed the bit about using a 24V input. Then, yes, of course the current will be cut in half.

So, if you go instead straight from the SB120 to the Ecoflow without the DC-DC, what current will the Ecoflow allow? If it's low and around 12V it will take a long time to charge, if high the 10AWG may be an issue again.

 

[MCtree]

No need to apologize. I very much appreciate you putting your brain to my questions. I live in fear of doing something wrong here and burning down my Land Cruiser. So the more questions the better.

The ecoflow allows me to select the amperage from the 12v source. I think the max is 8 amps.
I believe the ecoflow uses the XT60 vs the XT60i to determine if it’s 12v power vs solar.
So I use an XT60i from the Victron so the ecoflow thinks it’s getting solar power and charges at 400watts. With just an XT60, I believe the Ecoflow will know it’s a vehicle’s 12v system and will limit the amps to 8A.

Of course… I wrote “believe” a fair amount in that last paragraph. I will need to test all this once I get the wires assembled to verify. I have them all on order and should receive the bits and pieces early next week.

And yes, I know it will charge the ecoflow much more slowly when the Victron isn’t incorporated into the system. It’s my plan to not use the Victron when I have full days of driving. The 8A is more than sufficient to keep the ecoflow topped off with 8 hours of driving a day.

The Victron is for days in camp when I want to charge the ecoflow back up quickly. (And when solar panels won’t suffice for one reason or the other)

 

[e9999]

sounds fine then.

There are many vids on YT about soldering XT60s and SBs. Have a look, it's very easy. You can find soldering irons for very cheap (or even free) on CL and at garage sales. For the big stuff you can use an inexpensive propane torch. You can also get hydraulic crimper kits for about $50 that should do SB120s (but crimps are easier -and costlier- to mess up than soldering jobs).

 

[ducktapeguy]

I’m looking to clean up some of my wiring and need a way to use an existing SB120 Anderson plug to get power to an XT60 plug (that I will use to power my Ecoflow delta 2).

I can find SB120 to SB50 jumpers and then SB50 to XT60 wires but I don’t like the idea of that jumper. I would like to skip it and go directly SB120 to XT60.

The problem I run into is that SB120 connections that I see have a min wire gauge of 6GA while the largest XT60 wire I see is 10GA.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Is it possible to connect 6GA to 10GA in a safe manner?

(And lest anybody is worried, I won’t be pulling more than 8amps through this wire and connection so I’m not worried about blowing anything.)

The easiest way is to just strip a little extra off the end of the 10ga wire and double or quadruple it up then crimp it into the SB120. I've done it a few times under certain circumstances. The SB120 can handle wire gauge between 2-6ga, or between 13~33 square mm cross sectional area. 10ga wire has a cross sectional area of 5.2mm, so folding over twice would put you right in the middle of the range. Or instead of folding it sometimes I'll just add extra pigtails to run spare connectors (i.e. I'll put in an a couple SB50 or XT60 leads) so it leaves me with some extra options.

Technically it's probably frowned upon but it works. The limitation is going to be the XT60 connector no matter how you wire it, and the ecoflow won't charge more than 8 amps through DC so the risk is insignificant. I would just add some strain relief at the connectors to prevent wire fatigue where it exits the connector.

Note: I would not do this if you were trying to connect 2 SB120 connectors together with 10ga wire, because then there is the possibility of overloading the wire. I would only recommend this if the current is being limited by something else (i.e. the XT60).

 

[MCtree]

The easiest way is to just strip a little extra off the end of the 10ga wire and double or quadruple it up then crimp it into the SB120. I've done it a few times under certain circumstances. The SB120 can handle wire gauge between 2-6ga, or between 13~33 square mm cross sectional area. 10ga wire has a cross sectional area of 5.2mm, so folding over twice would put you right in the middle of the range. Or instead of folding it sometimes I'll just add extra pigtails to run spare connectors (i.e. I'll put in an a couple SB50 or XT60 leads) so it leaves me with some extra options.

Technically it's probably frowned upon but it works. The limitation is going to be the XT60 connector no matter how you wire it, and the ecoflow won't charge more than 8 amps through DC so the risk is insignificant. I would just add some strain relief at the connectors to prevent wire fatigue where it exits the connector.

Note: I would not do this if you were trying to connect 2 SB120 connectors together with 10ga wire, because then there is the possibility of overloading the wire. I would only recommend this if the current is being limited by something else (i.e. the XT60).

Cool. This is what I was thinking. But folding over the 10awg to double it up in the splice, since I’ve already ordered the SB120 with a foot of 6awg coming out of it.

Thanks.

And good to know about the “strain relief.”
I keep reading about it and your message has pushed me over the edge where I need to actually learn what it is. I’ll google.

(And to be clear, I know in general what “strain relief.” I’m just not sure what it means specifically with electrical plugs or how to install it.)