A Brief History…

Cable lugs are connectors that are used to connect/terminate cables together, and they form an important part of an electrical system. Cable lugs are normally made from one of two metals – copper or aluminium or their respective alloys.

As far as functionality goes, they both serve similar purposes, but the differences are more to do with their specific characteristics and applications. Let’s take a look at why aluminium cable lugs used to be popular as well as why copper is now the preferred choice for cable lugs.

Aluminium Cable Lugs

The history of aluminium cable lugs goes back to the early days of the 1960s, when a substantial amount of engineering innovation was happening, and aluminium was part of that innovation. Back then in India, aluminium wires were being used in almost every home wiring system. Since the electrical wires were made of aluminium, electricians used aluminium cable lugs for jointing in order to avoid a galvanic reaction and ultimately a failed joint.

However sound this practice may be they still ran into a lot of termination failures. Connections being lost at these junctions had aluminium cable lugs being used, and as a result of this, electrical fires started occurring frequently. Electricians did not know why this was happening, because aluminium is a very good conductor of electricity and they had been using it for a while.

When the fires became too wide, research finally revealed that aluminium cable lugs were the source of the problem. One of the problems was the formation of aluminium oxide which led to a large percentage of fires, and the problem persisted even after trying a variety of combinations.

Eventually, it was decided that aluminium simply isn’t the right metal for electrical wiring, and that’s when copper came into the picture as a more effective replacement.