Amphenol milspec BNC assembly onto RG58

I've done a few of these now, and I think I've gotten the hang of it pretty well. Of course people instead chose to crimp such cheap ones you can buy as new but the art of soldering / clamping your BNC has a field repair possibility that the crimp ones lack.

Obviously it helps my point of view that I stumbled on a rather large cache of these at a very good price a few years back.

Step 0

Tools needed:
Razor sharp knife. I use a Stanley.
Pair of scissors.
Longnose pliers
Soldering iron
Solder, and perhaps extra flux, and if so, cleaner.
2 off 11mm (actually it's 7/16" AF) open jaw wrenches, one ground thin.
A vise to hold the cable is not a bad idea.
Also, a small container for all the parts is probably a requirement.

Step 1

Start by gathering your stuff. Apart from the cable, you need: Connector body, compression nut, forward insulator, rear insulator, centre pin, inner rubber disc, rear rubber ring, two off washers for rubber ring, and a flanged screen terminator.

Step 2

Before anything else, push, in this order, onto the cable: Compression nut, 1 washer, rear rubber ring, 1 washer.

Step 3

Remove outer jacket for about 15mm. I use a Stanley knife and am very careful with pressure. The key is to not nick or cut any wires from the screen braid.

Step 4

Flare out the screen wires, and push the flanged screen terminator over the inner dielectric so that it inserts itself between the dielectric and the screen braid.

Step 5

Once you've pushed it all the way in under the screen and jacket, trim the excess screen braid wires off. I usually use a pair of scissors for this.

Step 6

Again using the Stanley knife, make a circular incision in the dielectric, flush with the flange on the screen terminator. Do not cut all the way in, but try to leave a mm or so and pull the dielectric off with a set of pliers. This way, you avoid nicking the inner conductor.

Step 7

Push the inner rubber disc and the rear insulator onto the center conductor. The recess in the rear insulator is towards the front.

Step 8

Trim the length of the center conductor until the centre pin can be pushed all the way in and bottom through both the rear insulator and the inner rubber disc without bending the inner conductor.

Step 9

Solder the pin to the inner conductor.
Steps to do a successful solder job:

• Locate the little hole in the pin and have it facing you.
• Heat the pin from the opposite side using the flat side of a chisel tip on the soldering iron.
• Apply a fairly small amount of solder into the hole, but not too little.
• Remove heat and let cool.
• Inspect. It is proper when you can see the individual wires in the center conductor still identifiable under a thin coat of solder, and the joint stands a pull test.
• If using aggressive flux, clean.

Step 10

Push the forward insulator onto the pin. If you used too much solder, now you pay the price for that. It's probably best to remove the excess with a solder sucker braid.

Step 11

Push the connector body over the end of the cable. The forward insulator bottoms out and guides depth.

Step 12

Push the washer, rubber ring and second washer into the connector body.
Screw the compression nut in until it bottoms out. It will compress the rubber ring and create a fairly watertight seal around the cable.

Step 13

I usually finish with a inventory tag under shrink tubing. These two are supposed to carry 10MHz clock from a router and thus will get SMB connectors in the far end.

Copyright 2020 Måns Nilsson. BSD 3-clause license.