Great open barrel crimper for Molex terminals

I've got one that's like a pair of pliers. I've been disapointed. Most crimps are great, then I get one where the wire slides back out of the crimp after a while. I started pulling on the just crimped connecter to test them and it mostly solved the issue.

Most of the trouble is with 22 guage and smaller. Have you tried this tool with this fine a wire and checked if they will pull out?

Karl

hey Thanks!!

Noted for ordering.

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. Gunner Asch

I will use 20 gauge only for all control connections inside the cabinet. It seems to work well on 20ga. I also tried it with 24 ga and it seemed good also.

I always pull on every crimp I make.

It seems OK, but I will definitely check every crimp.

i

Wire slips out? This looks like it is for crimping piercing type terminal connectors like the pins in a D-SUB connector. Am I missing something?

Try stripping the wire about twice as long as needed, fold stripped part in half, crimp. You may need to fill the connector a bit more (shrug).

I have also trimmed the "ears" or "flags" down some with dikes to match smaller wire better. If the flag portion is too long it won't crimp/fold down correctly.

One uses different terminals and crimp dies for the various wire sizes.

The non-ratcheting pliers type crimpers are almost useless.

Joe Gwinn

Part of the problem is getting terminals designed for the wire gauge. There are usually two or three terminals to fit a given connector body with different wire sizes and requiring a different nest in the crimper. (In the AMP connectors of the DB-25 and similar series, there are two pin sizes -- one with a tiny blue dot, the other with a tiny red dot.)

Also -- avoid terminals which have a single 'U' instead of two. The crimper should have separate zones for the two 'U's. The zone closer to the pin crimps on the bare wire to make connection, and the zone closer to the wire insulation end is intended to crimp only onto the insulation to prevent vibration flex right behind the crimp which leads to early failure.

Another problem is if the crimper does not have a ratchet to force you to complete the crimp cycle before you relase the terminal.

If you can't get terminals and a crimper to precisely fit the

22 ga wire, do what I do: 1) Strip about 2-1/2 times the normal recommended length. 2) Twist the wire tighter as you pull the insulation clear. (Start the strip with the stripper, but finish removing the insulation by hand.) 3) Fold the stripped wire in half so it fills more of the space in the terminal, insert that and crimp.

Oh yes -- another thing to consider. These open-sided terminals are made to use on stranded wire -- not solid wire. Avoid solid for this kind of wiring.

For the closed tube style with insulation plastic on them (not usually in connector bodies) the size of wire is indicated by the color of the plastic sleeve -- cycling through three colors normally.

ga color

---- -----

26-24 Yellow

22-18 Red

16-14 Blue 12-10 Yellow

8 Red

6 Blue 4 Yellow 2 Red 0 (1-0) Blue 2-0 Yellow 3-0 Red 4-0 Blue

The group of three is the most commonly useful size, but I have AMP brand terminals and crimpers (not for sale) for almost all of the sizes listed in my personal collection. (Anything from 8 ga up is hydraulically crimped, the others are manual -- though the common group is also available with a pneumatic crimper for production runs.

Good Luck, DoN.

This one is a ratcheting, safety type. It would not release until I completed the crimp.

i

We use the Molex universal hand crimper (non-ratcheting) for small production work, on the small MiniFit Jr. pins and the bigger old-style ones. Molex part number is 638111000, at Mouser for $49 each. Non-ratcheting but has lots of sizes so you can handle any wire size in a given pin. You also have to do the insulation crimp as a second op, so not as fast but very versatile.

----- Regards, Carl Ijames

A couple of years ago I was looking at the so called "tools" in a dollar store while my wife shopped. I saw bag after bag of multi colored electrical connectors of every type. I was stunned to see they were all actually Molex connectors, at about a dime on the dollar. Indeed I did stock up!

That's good. But it sounds like you don't have adequate match between wire size, terminal type (wire size acceptance range), and crimper dies. All must match.

And, crimping is for stranded wire, not solid wire. That said, in a pinch I solder the terminal to the solid wire.

I have also soldered stranded wire into terminals. The largest example was when I was attaching big copper terminals to some AWG #4 wire, to power a lighting panel for a stage. I was a teenager, and did not have the humongous and expensive crimper. I needed to use a small terminal, as there was not physical space for the usual mechanical wire-clamp terminal.

The terminal was made from copper tubing, one end being flattened and punched to accept the large terminal stud, the other end being an open cup. So, I held the terminal in a vise and soldered the big wire into the cup with a propane torch and plumbers' solder and Nocorrode grease flux, just like soldering copper pipe. The school maintenance folk were surprised at this approach, but soldered connections were (and are still) acceptable under the National Electrical Code.

Joe Gwinn

Amen! That is why I have a bucket (plastic cat litter bucket) full of crimpers -- just for terminals -- and not counting the hydraulic ones for 8 ga and larger.

I've got a similar bucket full of air tools. One of the benefits of having cats. :-)

With the hazard that if it is subject to vibration, it is far more likely to fail -- especially if you don't have and use anti-wicking tweezers.

That sounds good -- though a proper eutectic lead/tin solder would have been better with a rosin flux -- and a solder pot to dip the wire into to tin it first. Was this AWG #4 wire solid or stranded?

Certainly under the NEC -- but they are not acceptable with aerospace connections. Crimp terminals are by far preferred there.

Enjoy, DoN.

All true, but in a pinch ...

I was a teenager doing a one-off job. Well, two-off. So, no reason to get all that nice kit. I did pre-tin the wire and the cup before sweating wire to cup.

Stranded.

Absolutely. Crimp is far more reliable, especially under vibration.

Solder-type coax connectors are quite unreliable - the heating-cooling cycle causes the big nut that clamps the shield to unscrew over time, causing open shields. I found this out when diagnosing an unreliable Xyplex satistical multiplexer (connects multiple VT100 terminals to a VAX, in the days before ethernet became practical). Many of the BNC connectors had open shield connections. The solution was to cut all the solder BNC connectors off the RG-58 cable and to install crimped BNC connectors in their place. If I recall, we used AMP tooling and connectors. Anyway, problem solved, almost overnight.

Joe Gwinn

Understood. And where you were doing it -- you would not have much vibration -- unless perhaps for a performance of "Riverdance". :-)

[ ... ]

No reason -- and probably no resources either. :-)

Good. Though for that size wire, a solder pot (and a pre-dip in the rosin flux) makes for a more thorough tinning job.

So the pre-tinning goes without saying then. :-)

Hmm ... various styles available. I've got two which could do the job.

The first one does a separate crimp for the shield termination and for the center conductor pin. This is more likely to be used for BNC style connectors.

The other crimps both the shield and the center conductor at the same time. There are two small windows which the crimper reaches in through to crimp the center conductor. But these are normally for insert coax pins to go in block terminals -- and D-series connectors like the 13W3 used by Sun for monitor connections. (I have been looking for the connector inserts for a long time -- just to have a few which work with that crimper. :-)

Have you ever worked with the shield termination ferrules used for daisy-chaining a bunch of shields together and ending with a standard insulated wire to get a crimp-on pin for going into a block where the shields are not truly coax, but rather things like shielded twisted pair for low level signals but not RF frequencies? The crimper is the 59000 IIRC, with a whole series of interchangeable dies for different shield diameters. When you find them on eBay they may or may not have dies in them -- but the vendor almost never tells you which dies are installed. (Identified by color stripes to match the color of the ferrule which fits.) Purple for RG-174 (skinny coax cable) and similar size single conductor shielded (and perhaps some very small shielded twisted pair), and other colors for larger sizes, with brown and green being the ones I used most often.

Enjoy, DoN.

Which means that the wire will, sooner or later, break right at the terminal.

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. Gunner Asch

As I said, in a pinch. Actually, I've never had one fail, because I also reinforce this weak spot with heat-shrink tubing, and the environment was benign.

Or, the wire conductor was huge.

Joe Gwinn

That too. If I recall, the wire and terminals et al cost $1.72 in ~1965.

I used what the department had available, and any AMP crimp system was going to solve the problem.

Never had the pleasure.

But I do recall a problem in the late 1970s when a coax-cable computer link between buildings stopped working, even though there was continuity. Turned out that an electrician had cut the cable (don't recall if accidental or not) and spliced it back together with a pair of small wire nuts. The data signals bounced right off that impedance step. The poor man did not understand why we were laughing so hard, but sensed that he was somehow involved.

Joe Gwinn

Indeed -- if you had both the right crimp tools and terminals. I tend to have crimpers for terminals which I've never found, and vice-versa. :-)

Particularly beats having to unweave the braid, twist it into tails, slide on insulation, and the solder (or crimp) to pins in the connector. Particularly when there are a half-dozen shields to be terminated in one pin. :-) Each ferrule has two bulges (pre-crimping) to accept two wires -- either out the back along the jacketed wire or out the front to the connector pins.

*Big* smile!

Yes, I can imagine him not understanding it at all. He works with 60 Hz, and no runs long enough to be near a quarter wavelength or anything else significant. :-)

The ohmmeter says it is good -- so it must be good. :-)

Thanks, DoN.

This was in a big company, so we by chance did have a matching set for RG-58.

We did not try to explain it to him. It would be a magic show at best/

I have had the need to explain such things to other electricians, and gotten a big fight for my trouble. A person who does not know what he does not know, or even that there are such things.

Joe Gwinn