crimpers, which work best Options

[mightyohm]

I want to invest in a nice set of crimpers for uninsulated crimp terminals. I want something better than the $9.99 radio shack style. Ratcheting would be nice if it makes a better crimp. Does anyone here have any suggestions? I don't want to spend over $100.

This is the kind I don't want:
(IMG:http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/ccp51/media/images/product_detail/crimper200.jpg)
Sorry I couldn't find a better pic.

[lapuwali]

QUOTE (jkeyzer @ Dec 12 2005, 11:12 PM)

Whoa. Lots of good suggestions here! Am I right in assuming that the insulated type crimp connections are crap? (Just ask fiid...) I have never had much luck with them so I want to switch to uninsulated/heatshrink and a REAL crimp tool. James - I have found that most unsinsulated crimp tools do not have heart shaped dies - they are more of a flat on one side and a cup on the other. The heart shape dies are usually found in crimpers for d-sub pins or open barrel connectors - different beasts than closed barrel uninsulated ones. I suspect that one can get away with using the heart shaped kind on the closed barrel connectors as you suggest but I wonder why there is a difference? I have been looking on and off for about a year for a good manual on how to make REAL crimp connections, and I still haven't found anything that mentions what crimpers to use and the benefits of weatherproof splices (the kind with goo inside) etc. How come noone has written a book on this yet???

I don't use closed barrel terminals, and neither did the factory. The open barrel terminals are what most auto OEMs use, so you need to use open-barrel crimpers. Not easy to find, particularly for larger wire gauges, since most open barrel tools are made for electronics use, so 22-18g are the usual sizes seen. 14-10g are almost never seen outside the auto world.

The terminals for the excellent Weatherpak connectors are also open-barrel. Frankly, I have no idea who uses the closed barrel connectors in such quantity, nor do I understand why it's so hard to find open barrel terminals. I'm sure the suppliers exist, they sell to all of the automakers, but no doubt in million unit quantities.

Note the photo in Mueller's post. Those are exactly the type of twin open barrel crimps I like to see, complete with the extra fingers to grip the wire insulation.