I wanted to be able to crimp AMP/Tyco Stratotherm connectors correctly but the new price of a 46447 crimper was scary so I bought a 2nd hand one from a guy in California. He listed it with USPS international flat rate shipping so it being sent to the UK was not a problem. The crimper was obviously used as the dies were a bit polished but seem undamaged according to the AMP/Tyco documentation . What I'm curious about is that the handles and the die head were wired closed and had a lead seal applied to hold the wire, is this a standard practice in some US industry and if so for what purpose. The crimper did have some rather tenacious labels on the handle indicating its use for a particular butt splice.
Usually the lead seal is used to determine if something's been tampered with. Here, my closest guess is that he wanted to constrain it from springing open in shipping. Does the lead seal have any kind of letters, numbers, or a logo or anything stamped into it?
None that I could see. The vendor noted in the ebay text that he had bought the item for resale so I presume the lead seals were applied before by the previous owner. IIRC the other 46447 crimper he sold didn't have the seals.
O.K. I just looked it up -- pure compound leverage, like most of my AMP crimpers.
Now -- if there is a number or something in the lead seal, it might indicate that it has been though factory refurbishment and not used since.
Or -- someone doesn't know about the Certi-Crimp ratchet which only allows you to open the handles after you complete the crimp. You can stop squeezing one click before that, and the handles will stay together.
Or -- someone removed/disabled the Certi-Crimp ratchet (a diagonal line between the handles with a one-way sliding motion until the crimp is complete), and needed the wire and seal (or something) to keep the handles from spreading out and making it difficult to box or to keep in a toolbox.
If the ratchet is not present, or not functional, there is no assurance that a given crimp will be tight enough.
Your wording suggest that you removed the labels? Normally, the color indicates the wire size range (at least with the pre-insulated terminals). The size is also stamped on part of the assembly at the head end, and (again for the pre-insulated terminals) the end of the handles is dipped in paint, with the following translations:
Yellow 28-24 Ga Red 22-16 Ga (or 22-18 if for mil spec use) Blue 16-14 Ga (often one handle is blue, one is green in this) Yellow 12-10 Ga
past this point, we get into the hydraulic tools, but the cycle of colors continues (with the colors being dots in shallow drill holes on the interchangeable dies) up through 4-0. (Two sizes of crimper heads, for two sizes of dies.)
Assuming that your crimper is complete, you have an excellent tool.
BTW You can download the manual in PDF format from Tycho's site. The file name is "ENG_SS_408-1542_K.pdf" which covers several models including yours.
The crimper is complete with the certi-crimp rachet in place and functional. I did remove the label as it wasn't an AMP original but a user applied label indicating its use for a specific number butt splice. The tool die head does 3 ranges of wire sizes and those sizes are marked on the die head. I'll oil it and put it away now until the terminals arrive.
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