Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Pin Connectors, Crimpers, decent connections, and the futility of it all...
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Dundarave:
I've been trying to make reliable connectors using the pins/connector/crimper system shown in the photo, but no matter how much I practice, I can never crimp on a pin, male or female, that will slide nicely into the connector while forming a solid mechanical and electrical connection with the wire.  The top of the crimp invariably ends up too wide to fit properly, despite trying to pre-form the pin's metal "wings", and not squeezing to the extreme end of the tool's travel.

So I thought I'd ask if anyone has been able to be consistently successful at doing this, or if it's a well-known hopeless cause and I'm just late to the party.  I used to be pretty good with spade lugs back in the day, so I'm generally used to crimpers and the need to finesse them, etc., but I'm ready to abandon this and see if soldering the wire to the pin is a better approach.  I've just wasted hours debugging a project module that was ultimately caused by flaky connections to my RPi header.

I thought perhaps the crimpers themselves were the problem, as the inexpensive ones I'm using make it near impossible to reliably judge the depth of the stripped wire (and are ultimately responsible for the deformed result in any case).  If manually creating decent pin connections is actually possible, does anyone have a recommendation for the brand of crimpers that will make them so?

Thanks -

RobertHolcombe:
Its hard to tell from the photo, but I've experienced the same issues, I just overcome it with a pair of needle nose pliers after crimping

I'd guess this is just due to low cost crimpers not being manufactured to the right spec
helius:
http://www.engineer.jp/en/products/pa09e.html
Dundarave:

--- Quote from: helius on February 07, 2019, 05:16:53 am ---http://www.engineer.jp/en/products/pa09e.html

--- End quote ---

Thanks, Helius, for that link to the Engineering Inc. crimper!  A quick Google query turned up a practical review of the tool, by a tech who was experiencing the same frustrations with the cheaper crimping tools.  The video demonstrates an excellent comparison between the Engineering Inc. crimper and a cheap $12 crimper pretty much identical to the one I'm using.  The tool that Helius recommended is C$60 on Amazon, however, but looks like it's worth it. (to me, anyway.  Any excuse for a new tool... ;D)  I'll be ordering it shortly...



Psi:
Most manufactures of little crimp connector pins do not conform to any standard. They invent their own system and sell their own crimp tool for $300-20000, i'm not kidding.
They have to make their own tool anyway, since anyone wanting to crimp their connectors correctly and to spec will want an official tool guaranteed to work. So they have a reason to use a custom format and make you buy the tool from them at a high price.

Example
Here's the official TE Connectivity crimp tool for their AMP series VAL-U-LOK pins (the type of pin used in 24pin computer ATX powersupply plugs)
You'd think this tool would be cheap, since all computers use a version of it. Nope US$370,
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/91388-1/A30667-ND/701672

There's a reason why the "Crimpers, Applicators, Presses" section on digikey has 15958 different crimp tools. 
:-DD
Page 1 starts with big crimp machines worth $400,000 and even after page 28 your still looking at hand crimpers worth over $1200

Lots of china crimp tool copies exist, you just need to find the right crimp tool for the connector pin you have. I've found there is a wide range in quality when it comes to 3rd party crimp tools. Some work fine, ya just need to find a good one.

And please, no one bring up the idea of crimp+solder, this thread will get to 400 pages of arguments.  ;D
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