Best wire crimper

Another very useful thread I have followed with interest. It is shocking how times move on when you are not paying attention. In the days of doing much more electric stuff I would not have dreamed of considering a proper connection without soldering it. Then I found some crimping terminals and thought they could be done with just any old pliers (well, the crimper I bought first was actually worse!).

Now having read all the posts twice I know better (I think!). To fill the gaps I spent an entertaining evening with Google. Clearly the crimping v. soldering issue is still alive in some circles - one of the boating forums filled over 4 pages with ad hominem attacks by true believers on heretics!

Anyway, inspired I went and bought a "proper" crimper today. It is similar to the Klein 1006 made by Channellock. I could not get the ratchet models even if I wanted to spend the money. This one was really the only usable one, the rest resembled the horrible thing I bought many years ago.

I feel more comfortable about the up-coming electric jobs.

What's your standard pull test?

IIRC the Boeing test is 50 lbs. I never saw anyone actually use the wire pull tester at MITRE, we just yanked on the wire.

Jim Wilkins

In a similar vein, I tried my pneumatic crimper today, and I am very happy with the results. It is a little handheld thing with a lever, pictured here:

I bought it on ebay.

What I mentioned was how AMP says to calibrate their crimpers, with a pair of gauge pins as go/no-go tests.

If the go won't fit, it is crimping too tight and crushing the wire, leading to early failure in pull conditions.

If the no-go fits, it is too loose, and just as likely to have a wire pull out.

Of course, it is important to use the *right* size wire as well as the right size terminal and the right size crimper dies. Any one of those wrong will allow pull-out or other failures. This is why the dies mark the crimped terminal so you can tell whether it was crimped with the proper dies. (Alternating one-dot two-dots through the colors until you get large enough so readable size numbers can be crimped into the insulation.

BTW -- I was lucky at the hamfest today, and got a couple of bags of the small yellow (26-22 Ga) terminals -- a quite rare size in either eBay auctions or hamfests. And unless you are doing serious aviation work, you probably don't want to pay the new price for AMP terminals. :-) Even at hamfest prices, the sizes from 1-0 through 4-0 often cost $1.00 per terminal. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

:-)

You may find it intersting to know that as far back as 1964 (the first that *I* knew of it) the Telephone company (Ma Bell in all its pre-breakup glory) considered a soldered connection to be temporary, and a wire-wrapped connection to be permanent. (These were using 22 Ga solid wire and larger square pins than are used for wire wrapping logic boards, but the principle is the same -- ten full turns under tension around a sharp-cornered post resulting in 40 oxygen-free connections (four per turn).

And while they are considered permanent -- there are tools to undo the connection without damaging the terminal, although you can't re-use the length of wire which made up the wrap. :-)

O.K. It should have at least (since it does not have a ratchet) stops somewhere which contact when the crimper it fully closed. Make sure that you always crimp until those stops touch.

Note that the pre-insulated crimp terminals are designed for stranded wire -- not solid wire. Solid *will* often pull out from the crimp. And solid wire is also much more vulnerable to vibration damage as well.

Good -- and good luck, DoN.

O.K. That one looks very much like the ones made by AMP. The crimping dies pivot on two long-headed screws, and are operated by an air-powered wedge moving between rollers on the back end of the die heads. Otherwise, those die heads are very much like the ones on the ratchet crimpers.

With an orange box containing the pneumatic logic? Watch out for the hoses inside, which may have gotten brittle with age and which may need tracing before they crumble. (And -- *if* they crumble in place, you are likely to have a chunk of the tubing caught in part of the pneumatic logic.)

I have seen some offered without the pneumatic logic box -- just valved straight from the air feed to the crimper head. If you have three hoses in parallel from the head to the box, you have the pneumatic logic.

I got a "wiring" diagram for the logic from the makers of the logic components.

Enjoy, DoN.

When the real crimper manufacturers do testing of their products, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that proper crimps make the best connections.

The microscope pictures of cross sectional cuts thru the centers of the crimps should be enough evidence to convince the hardest skeptics.

High current connectors on large cables are the same.. soldering large cables into connectors always presents a high degree of risk.

As someone else mentioned, quality connectors are very important, as there are a lot of cheap imitations available almost everywhere. I've used a lot of T&B connectors because I've never had any regrets from using them. They haven't changed the connectors to be able to produce them more cheaply.

I've often used the crimpers intended for bare connectors to crimp insulated connectors, and they aren't prone to failure if a couple of things are realized. The wire used in the connector isn't too small. The insulated connector is used in the crimping tool space where the diameter of the insulating material fits the ground notch of the crimping position. Enough force is used to fully crimp the metallic sleeve portion of the connector. Pull to test the integrity of the connection, and push to make sure the connection is tight. Be aware that the insulating material has been compromised, so don't use it against a conductive part that's at a different voltage potential other than the particular connection.

I still solder some stranded leads when crimp connectors aren't being used. In some situations, soldering just the tips of the strands together for stranded wire, ensures that there won't be any stray strands. If the solder isn't allowed to wick along the rest of the strands the wire end will remain flexible enough to withstand being moved, without causing a fatigue spot at the connection.

The Western Union splice is the nearly perfect example of what an electrical connection should be like. The contact surface area is greater than the cross sectional area of the wire. The electrical connection is mechanically secure.

One T&B tool I have is the multi-purpose tool for stripping, cutting, crimping for bare and insulated connectors and machine screw cutting. The crimp point for bare connectors isn't very good, but adequate for a secure connection. The notches for stripping are ground sharp to cut the insulation, so releasing my hand pressure after cutting thru the insulation doesn't cut into the wire, and makes pulling the insulation almost effortless. For most small gage crimping purposes, the long handled, forged steel T&B crimpers perform flawlessly, and have only needed a couple of drops of oil occasionally.

I've never owned the types of cheap crimpers I see for sale all the time. They look like they'd be painful to use and a source of frustration and problems. I see them in friends' tool boxes, but have never had to ask to use them.

Yep.

No, it was a long time ago.

I do not have any box, just a crimper with a flexible hose piece.

Melted the brushes out of my HF 4 1/2" grinder first time I used it.

Doug T

The orange grinders seem to hold up pretty well.

The other ones..are utter crap

Gunner, 4 orange HF grinders, all running ok "Human nature is bad. Good is a human product  A warped piece of wood must be steamed and forced before it is made straight; a metal blade must be put to the whetstone before it becomes sharp. Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles." ?Sun Tzu  

That was me that mentioned the pull test. And I think the pull test is done to have a calibration sticker applied. The adjustment with the go and no go pins is to adjust the crimpers if necessary. And then the pull test done again to verify that the adjustment was done correctly. I did not say what the standard is because it would vary with the size and because I never knew the values. I think the pull test was done until there was a failure with something like 5 samples and all samples had to fail above some value. At least that is how I would make the calibration test, until someone pointed out a better way.

Dan

The ones I've seen crimped like this have really mutilated the plastic portion. The actual crimp was poor too. I know you better than that though and if you feel it is a good crimp I believe you. A lot of it depends on the tool being used. This is my favorite tool that I use for non-insulated crimps:

A few years later the two crimp portions were more heavily utilized. It works really well up to 8 gauge and pretty good yet on 6 gauge terminals (all non-insulated). It is probably close to 10 inches long, good leverage.

They (Ideal) have a decent looking ratchet crimper too:

This sucker would have been nice for a few odd jobs:

I took a look at my good insulated crimper. Came from Sears around 30 years ago but has AMP clearly labeled on it too. It has a front die shape very similar to the Ideal ratchet version I linked to above, but I'm sure it is not quite as heavy. They were only meant to be used up to the 10 gauge/yellows.

Probably the same thing, I just learned to call it by a different name. They are made to be pushed on over the insulation of two parallel wires. They are almost guaranteed to create a service call for you in the not too distant future. Like these @#$% here:

What? More new-fangled things? I even hear people stopped using vaccum tubes in some applications! What is the world coming to? I tried one of them new-fangled transistors but did not care for it much. When you heat it properly like a vacuum tube it does not work worth a damn...

Yes, there is a well-defined stop. Also nice long handles which fit comfortably so closing is not a problem. They had another one for half the price: Shorter handles which were quite far apart. Did not trust it to do the job...

This is where I am still somewhat confused: The crimpers I have laid my hands on so far (not many) have different profiles for insulated and non-insulated crimping but the insulated profiles are *different from one another*. For instance mine has a sort of little anvil with a much smaller nipple opposite for non-insulated but for insulated it is a simple diamond shaped apperture (slighly rhomboid to be precise - not sure if by design or by slack tolerance in manufacturing). I tried the insulated portion on a couple of blue terminals. I mangled the first one. The second one I squeezed with a bit more circumspection and it came out quite nicely (pull test=OK :-)

The other crimper that I did not buy simply had the same arrangement for insulated and non-insulated - anvil and nipple - but the insulated was larger

I thought as much and with the crimper bought a supply of heat-shrink tubing :-)

In my youth I found one's teeth were the best for stripping insulation. Now I have one of those tools that does it almost by itself: Grips, cuts and strips in one squeeze.

In the old days the ability to solder was almost a test of manhood. One of the knocks against soldering (corrosion caused by the residual flux) was generally obviated by using violinists' rosin. Even with soldering times have moved on. When I saw the first temperature-controlled iron I nearly fainted.

The compressed/deformed area of the crimp connector differs quite a bit on various crimping tools.

Basically, there are two crimp styles on high quality crimpers like the AMP crimpers, mentioned earlier. One being the diamond shaped opening for insulated connectors/terminals, where both sides of the crimper "die" area are the same shape.

The other style is the W type (primarily for uninsulated connetors/terminals), and half of the die area is about half-round, while the other half is shaped similar to a 3. When the two sides are forced together, the C&3 together form a sort-of W in the cross section of the crimp zone.

A third common type is a simple straight bar on one side, and about half-round on the other side. When C&- are forced together, it sort-of forms a U shape in the crimp zone. This type of crimp is primarily intended for uninsulated connectors/terminals.

This U-shaped crimp is the one that I sometimes use for insulated connectors. The crimp zone gets fully closed around the stranded wire, and a good compression takes place when the amount of wire placed in the connector, and the applied hand pressure are a good balance. The insulator becomes compromised when the bar die displaces the plastic when the crimp is completed. The plastic insulator displaces on the bar side because it can, since the plastic isn't constrained like it is on the other side (also because the surface area is less on the bar side, so the pressure forces the bar into the plastic).

The U-shaped crimp, when made with crimpers that are made from stamped, flat steel, is not as secure as the same crimp made with forged steel crimpers, because the thickness/width of the tool (also the die halves) is different.

The stamped, flat steel crimping tools are generally thick enough to make good diamond crimps, but not very good U-shaped crimps, IMO. Some stamped, flat steel tools use a V notch for the area of the uninsulated connector crimp.

The diamond and W die sets in the AMP hand crimpers are wider than stamped, flat steel crimpers, and consistently form very high reliability crimps (every time), but they are limited to 2 wire sizes per crimping tool, and cost over $400 new. These are the reasons the AMP crimping tools are basically considered specialty tools. When they can be bought for under $30, used, they become an excellent value, as long as they're in good condition.

One crimper feature that I didn't see mentioned is comfortable grips. This can be a fairly important factor when many crimps are needed to be made in one session.

The forged steel crimpers generally have wide, comfortable grips, and the AMP models (others, too) have comfortable, almost tubular handles formed from flat steel. Compound leverage is used in many of the high quality crimpers so operator fatigue is essentially nonexistent.

Yes it does mess up the insulation some as I stated but I've rarely had problems with that on low voltage work. If used on high voltage I use tape even if not messed up.

Nice looking pliers. I have a heavy cable cutter from Channellock that does my heavy cable cutting.

I have a T&B ratchet crimper for those sizes though I rarely use it.

Looks a little bulky for some jobs.

I have a large T&B crimper for larger sizes which I use down to 8ga usually (in tight places I use the small ratchet described above but feel it doesn't do as good a job). Ok. I looked them up. My ratcheting one is the TBM25S shown on this page.

I do have several of those type crimpers some better than others. However I only use them for cutting screws to length.

Ok. I was thinking wire nut when you said Scotch-lok. Those are definitely the ones to stay away from.

Snort! You have better tools than I ever had for crimping stuff and this isn't even your primary area of expertise :)

That TBM25S is an interesting tool. Never seen one like it before. Thanks for the link.

In all the years I worked in electric and radio I never once saw a ratchet crimper in use by anyone to crimp terminals. The only ratchet styles were for coax and telephone RJ styles. Only the phone guys had the latter. The Ideal 30-425 that I had was the biggest crimper I ever saw company wide. Every installer (I was actually a tech) SHOULD have had something better, that is for sure. The only big crimpers I ever saw in use was by the Power Company. When I was working the electrical gig we always used split-nuts and lugs for big wire/cables. Wire larger than around 4 gauge was cut to length with a hacksaw.

After looking up the prices on both the ones I linked to and yours I would either do without or make my own nowadays. Even with a bit different attitude now towards tools they still cost too much to justify at new prices...

The AMP ratchet hand crimpers have no provisions for adjustment. Everything is fixed, from the travel of the ratchet bar through compound linkages (so you can apply sufficient force by hand) to the final closing of the crimp jaws. The places where the "adjustment" would be are only going to change by wear of the pivot pins and the holes in which they operate. When it wears that much, the gauge pins show it, and it is time to replace it -- not simply adjust something. The crimper has a *long* life before it wears that much -- but on a production line it will eventually wear that much.

Granted -- the newer ones which look more like vise-grip pliers with replaceable jaws can be adjusted by shims, but the PIDG crimpers which I use don't have replaceable jaws -- at least until you get to the hydraulic ones, in which case the proper depth of crimp is determined by shoulders on the dies which limit the travel. With this style, the only place where wear could occur is the rather seriously hardened and polished crimp surfaces themselves. (No, I'm not going to take one of my dies and test it with a Rockwell hardness gauge -- that would render it incorrect for the crimping job -- and apparently these dies sell

If the wire pulls out before the wire breaks between the crimp terminal and the puller, it has failed. If the break occurs first, it has passed. (And one *likely* cause of failure is using the wrong gauge wire, wrong terminal size, or wrong crimper or die set.)

Enjoy, DoN.

I've gotten very lucky at auctions and estate sales.

That one came with a bunch of different crimpers and misc. wiring stuff in a file card cabinet I bought at a estate sale. It's alright for the lighter duty terminals (large standard crimp terminals) but not good for the heavy duty terminals (like on battery cables). I also got the ratcheting crimper for insulated terminals that I don't like in the same lot.

The big one I use a lot doing cake feeder and electric hydraulic pump installations on feed trucks as well as my welding leads. I crimp a lot of 1/0, 4, and 6 gauge with it. I got it for $5 at a auction (along with the two 12" armstrong c-clamps for $5 each).

Around here they use a version of my large T&B crimpers for the overhead line (it has different dies than mine).

I do enough heavy gauge work that I finally broke down and got the large wire cutters like these for cutting the big stuff. They work great as long as you don't try to cut the ground on triplex (there's a hard wire in the middle).

I can't either which is why I say I was lucky at auctions.