The below is more for readers of this thread than for you, just to give them more detail on why these problems happen.
I have had incredibly god luck with 3 flavors of Amazon SB50 in 8AWG.
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* Some have significantly higher insertion force
If by "insertion force" you mean connecting two SB50's together, there's two kinds of contacts for most Andersons, one of which has higher retention force; I don't recall the specifics of what's different between the two contact types. (the housing is identical in these cases).
If instead you mean inserting the contact into the housing, that probably means the spring is stronger / stiffer (since it shouldn't be a housing size issue as the contacts should be a "fit" in them so they can float, as you already know
). If the spring is too strong it might cause issues with floating during connection but it seems more likely to force the contacts together better and create a better connection, as long as their flat contact surfaces still fully mate.
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* Cocked off 175s (I think) with too-stiff cable buggered a bunch of not to be named EV chargers
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* Oversized Insulation and double-stuffed wires buggered a bunch of PP45s on a Robotics program
Both of those are common failure modes because they prevent the contacts from floating in the housing and then properly mating their contact surfaces once connected.
Most people don't even attempt to understand the connectors they are using (even when designing a product, much less just when assembling them for other people/companies or even just for themselves), so they have no idea that preventing contact movement in a connector designed like the Andersons are will cause them to have poor contact and high resistance and often eventual failure of the system.
You can run 45A continuous on a PP45 (I have validated this) but only with all conditions absolutely perfect and a nice 10AWG heatsink. The same 45A on an SB50 wont even start to wake it up. I am FAR more comfortable running SB50 on projects that persist on customer sites (like batteries). You also see SB50 in a ton of industry applications that cant fail and last decades.
Yes, it is why I use the SB50 in just about every connection I have that uses any significant current**** including the connector I use on the big Sorenson DCS55-55 (?) for testing various things, and the Meanwells I use for charging stuff, and for running the B&D wall-plug type mower off battery packs instead.
****except for my present motor/controller phase and battery-bus connectors on the SB Cruiser, because they're Phaserunners from ebikes.ca and one already came with an L1019 for phases that is "good enough" for what I put it thru and PP45s that I've already proven "good enough" with previous controllers on the trike. But the main battery connector at the battery, and the one under the trike that splits off from the battery bus to each controller, is still SB50.
The lighting battery is only PP45 still.
And except for the connector on the Satiator, which is still the original XLR, because that was just easier for a waterproof panelmount on the trike's front since it isn't a built in charger unlike the traction pack that has a built-onto-the-trike meanwell.
