Jarred J. said:
crimps are used "in mass" because you can make more than one in an 15 minute time period.
My elemer has a WAS award on 2 meters. he used SILVER soldered connections on his contacts for EME. crimps and any other soldered would melt due to the heat from the aps running through them.
Every "elmer" i've talked to refuses to use crimps. thsoe guys have been hams 40 plus years...
the "mechanical" connection of coax is the spacer used when screwed down on the seal. i can yank on a soldered connection all day and now have it slide off with no damage unlike crimps.
everybody has their own preferred methods. and their are more than one way to skin a cat so we'll leave it at that.
And every radio shop that I've worked in for the last 25 years has been doing connectors with crimps.
UHF/SO-239, BNC, N, Mini-
UHF, TNC. Combination of accuracy & repeatability and speed. Sure, I can still solder a mean connector if I have to, but when I do it, I'm about 10 times slower, I still run the risk of loss of precision & accuracy, and a cold solder joint, etc.
Proper strip tool for the particular cable for correct stip-lengths.
Proper crimp too for the connector & cable. No, a pair of slip-joint or water-pump pliers is not proper. Yes, I have seen it, too many times. FAIL. Hexagonal crimp on outer ring, correct diameter hexagonal crimp on the center pin.
Run the crimper thru its full cycle of ratchet & release, once.
As far as hardline & connectors, I can't think of any one of the companies that doesn't have a 'tooling system' to properly prepare & attach, via either a crimp mechanism or some other sort of capitvated pin mechanism.
And whyinhell are you yanking so hard on connectors? They not supposed to bear any physical load, other than maybe their own weight of a short length of cable.
Now, on the other hand, yes, if I am building a Kilowatt-plus level EME station for 2M. or 430 MHz, and I'm trying to wrest every last dB of loss out of the system, I might make hand-soldered connectors, I say might. But I'd also set up a little assembly line process so I could do them perfectly repeatably, by the dozens. Craft & artisanship have their place.
With all due respect to your "elmers" , someone can be an elmer and still not have the proper clues about some things. I'm trying to not be a jerkwad here, but if you want, I'll give you my credentials & you can decide if they stack up against your elmers.