New Toy - Love at first crimp

[Enraged]

That is crazy. Now I just need to figure out how to justify buying one...

[lasersafe1]

It cuts, strips, twists the strands and crimps the ferrule in one tool. The ferrules are stored in a cartridge on the tool and slide into place for each crimp.

Twists the strands? Last time I checked, I still have a thumb and index finger for that. This must be designed in one of those heavily unionized countries that don't make the union factory labor do any real labor.

[bdring]

I worry that is a "jack of all trades master of none" type product. It does not look super strong at the crimper part.

[canadianavenger]

I worry that is a "jack of all trades master of none" type product. It does not look super strong at the crimper part.

That was my first impression as well. It also looks like it's a traditional 2 sided crimp instead of a 4 or 6, which may be an issue for some.

[bdring]

Here are the some of crimpers we have at work (day job). Some of these cost over $1000 each.

[Liberty4Ever]

I just got my ferrule crimper. It was a cheap eBay purchase, but it works great.

I bought the exact same crimper on eBay, a few months ago, for the big CNC retrofit I'm doing for a friend's business across town. The electrical panels had rat's nests of wires, wire nuts, twisted electrical tape connections, and even some duct tape. The electrical wiring is a LOT prettier now, including a lot of nice ferrules on the terminal connections. That ferrule crimper was a great buy. High quality at low cost = value!

I had a Plano or Flambeau fishing tackle box left over from some previous electronics organizing and it was the perfect size for the crimper and a nice assortment of ferrules, so I can take it to the job site.

I bought a few hundred white and red ferrules, and a hundred each of gray and black (the larger sizes), all nicely organized. Based on your report, I probably paid too much for the ferrules. I bought them from McMaster-Carr. They seemed cheap at the time. I'll check out FerrulesDirect.com. I'm not building electrical panels professionally, so for the few ferrules I buy and given the very real cost of placing an order, I'm probably better served by adding the occasional ferrule order to an order I'm already making at McMaster-Carr.

I probably will be getting a fair amount of use out of the ferrule crimper on my CNC laser, CNC lathe, and CNC milling machine. Like an idiot, I've been planning and buying parts for all three projects simultaneously. Hopefully, I'll be wiring a lot this fall and winter as all of my projects reach the finish line at nearly the same time.

I have over $600 worth of crimpers. A good crimper can really improve the quality of your life when terminating wires and wiring electronics. I hate it when I get a new project (like a 3D printer) and part of it ships with crimp connectors, and despite all of the expensive crimpers I have, I still don't have the crimper I need, and I'm once again forced to mangle a crimp-on connector pin with needle nose pliers and then solder it.

That reminds me, I've been intending to start a thread about another hobbyist wire termination issue. Wire labels. I've tried lots of professional solutions, but they're not cheap. I have a reasonably fast and cheap solution that produces good results at the hobby level. I'll document the process and start a new thread rather than hijacking this one.

[Cre8ivdsgn]

Liberty4ever comments:

That reminds me, I've been intending to start a thread about another hobbyist wire termination issue. Wire labels. I've tried lots of professional solutions, but they're not cheap. I have a reasonably fast and cheap solution that produces good results at the hobby level. I'll document the process and start a new thread rather than hijacking this one.

I used to do the Thomas&Betts wire markers and I have fantasized using heat shrink tubing markers. The only thing that seems to have worked over a long term (10-20 years) is color coded wiring. All other systems wore off, fell off, or otherwise became illegible. Also, with wire markers you have to label both ends and if the wires go through connectors, well, you go through a bunch of markers!

Some time back I had custom colored hookup wire made up (maybe 50 spools) back when wire was cheap. The process of coding the wires is remarkably inexpensive. So for example all my X axis wiring is brown, Y is orange, Z is yellow, and T is green. Outputs are purple, inputs are blue. For each base color I then have a colored line. So a black line is +limit, a brown line is -limit (obviously the brown on brown is solid brown, but thats ok), a red line is an in range, etc. (You might have enable, step, direction, encoder channel A, B, Z, etc.)

The only time this becomes frustrating is if you need the same wire in different gauge sizes for some reason.

Food for thought.