Author Topic: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)  (Read 5893 times)

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Offline Smokey

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #25 on: February 08, 2023, 02:53:44 am »
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And i'm gonna tell you something, this crimpin' that I got in my blood, it came from a family tree. My granddaddy was crimpin'. My great-great-great-granddaddy was crimpin'. I'm talking 'bout crimpin' since been crimpin' since been crimpin'!

https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-PAD-11-Precision-Crimping-Interchangeable/dp/B00IWD9XT6?th=1

Multiple die plates for all kinds of stuff.
 

Offline JohanH

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #26 on: February 08, 2023, 07:44:27 am »
I use IWS-3220M for Dupont and JST-XH. If it's the correct one, I don't know, but result looks and feels good.
For sure it's not correct for Dupont and insulation crimp cannot look good because it will be mangled like crimp on the left, not wrapped around the insulation.


I have that tool. Not correct for DuPont (though less bad than the SN-28B that’s usually sold as a DuPont crimper), but quite decent for XH. I use that exact tool for XH myself.

I stand corrected. I have mostly crimped JST-XH connectors with the IWS-3220M. Well then, looks like I need another tool for Dupont (eyeing the IWiss SN-025), although I don't use Dupont that often.
 

Offline ratkinsTopic starter

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #27 on: February 09, 2023, 09:01:33 am »
Have you looked at the Molex MTA system?

Ah, sorry, I wasn’t clear—I think I meant to say more of a crimp tool system—I want to buy one really nice tool now, for which I can get dies for potentially anything I want to do as a hobbyist in the future. In fact the proximate cause of thinking about this now is needing to do a few dozen butt splice connectors. I anticipate I’ll need to do other things in the future though, and I don’t want to end up acquiring half a dozen sub-par hand tools.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #28 on: February 09, 2023, 11:49:57 am »
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I want to buy one really nice tool now, for which I can get dies for potentially anything I want to do as a hobbyist in the future

That's pretty much why I settled on the Engineer - most dies don't work on other contacts because the front or back is the wrong size, so you have perfectly good tools that would do have the job. With the single action tools you can use them for front and back, just not at the same time, and that means you can mix and match.

But, as someone pointed out above, it depends on the volume of what you do. For a  handful of splices, doing them twice isn't that much of a deal breaker. If you were running off a hundred it would be a serious issue.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #29 on: February 09, 2023, 02:38:15 pm »
Have you looked at the Molex MTA system?

Ah, sorry, I wasn’t clear—I think I meant to say more of a crimp tool system—I want to buy one really nice tool now, for which I can get dies for potentially anything I want to do as a hobbyist in the future. In fact the proximate cause of thinking about this now is needing to do a few dozen butt splice connectors. I anticipate I’ll need to do other things in the future though, and I don’t want to end up acquiring half a dozen sub-par hand tools.
Whether this goal is achievable depends entirely on what kinds of connectors you end up using. For the most part, interchangeable-die tools are for larger terminals, not the small (and ever smaller!) ones we use in low voltage electronics.

You see this issue in the Knipex in your original post, you see it in other high quality interchangeable-die tools like Pressmaster MCT, and, frankly, basically every such system I’ve seen so far. They invariably seem designed for electricians, not for electronics work.

In fact, the Knipex system is probably already the “best” such thing, and even so, D-sub are basically the smallest it supports.

Even among the Chinese tools, where parts are often available, you can find the dies for most of the tools — but not for the smallest contacts (SN-01, for example). Those are only ever sold assembled into the tool.

So while I totally understand your desire (and frankly, wish it existed!), I don’t think it’s a realistic goal. If you want good crimps, you will eventually end up collecting expensive tools. Especially with small contacts, the locator (positioner) becomes more and more important, because positioning the connector accurately into the die simultaneously becomes more important, but harder to do, as the contacts get smaller. Some contacts, like genuine Mini-PV, are surprisingly difficult to crimp by handholding the contact. Cheap tools don’t have any locators at all, which makes crimping slower and much more error-prone. The downside to locators is that they make the crimp tool extremely specific. I am convinced that many of the dedicated tools sold by the connector makers actually use the same dies, just with a different locator attached.


Some advice: find some favorite connector types and try to use those as much as possible, with as optimal tools as possible.* When you can’t, choose connectors where you can buy precrimped leads — for something you’re only doing once, it’ll be cheaper to pay (for example) $2 each for 20 precrimped leads than to spend $500 on the tool, plus 40x $0.30 for the contacts (plus an extra 10 for practice), plus the wire, plus your time — or to spend 4 x $25 trying to find a cheap tool that works, plus dozens of dozens of wasted contacts for experimentation, plus hours and hours of research to find the tools to begin with and try to make them work.

*For example, I use JST XH a lot, and have considered spending the $300 to get the real JST tool, because it’s so much easier to use.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Crimpin’ ain’t easy (or: best hobbyist crimping tool/system?)
« Reply #30 on: February 09, 2023, 03:44:17 pm »
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are surprisingly difficult to crimp by handholding the contact

For the very tiny I snip the section out of the bandolier that holds the crimp, then use that as a tab for holding the crimp in place. Afterwards, a couple of waggles and it breaks off.

Using that method, you can pre-load the crimp with the stripped wire, hold the wire in place against the tab, and then place the lot en bloc into the tool.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2023, 03:45:59 pm by PlainName »
 
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