Which crimping tool for smart effector
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i have been a component level engineer for over 30 years. I have dozens of diffrent crimpers... i luv having the exact right the tool for the job and all but to date best crimping results i have gotten was with a 99 cent pair or tiny needle nose. If you have the patience for it. still a good way to go IMHO
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For low-volume repair work, high-quality ratcheting crimp tools are what is used in industry. Here is a cheap version on ebay: https://www.amazon.com/IWISS-Professional-Compression-Ratcheting-Wire-electrode/dp/B00OMM4YUY
Non-ratcheting types such as the one posted above are, in my experience, horrendous and are not used in industry.
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Ahh... the cheapies I use are PA21
They are "too thin" to properly crimp both sets of wings on the connector. Which I exploit to crimp each set manually. Produces GREAT results, very slowly, which is why you'll never see them in a shop. Still, great for hobbyist.
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Hmmm... they are not quite a cheap as I remembered, about $40 to $45 through several channels. I guess I'm remembering "cheap when compared to $300" or whatever.
Anyway, these work REALLY well for me, on a very broad variety of connectors:
https://www.ebay.com/p/Engineer-Pa-21-Universal-Crimping-Pliers-From-Japan-Tool/21011373122
https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-PA-21-Universal-Crimping-Pliers/dp/B002L6HJ8W
Delta / Kossel printer fanatic
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I will soon purchase one of the Engineer Crimping tools but I still haven't decided between PA-20 and PA-21. I have no idea whether there is a use in the small difference between 1.9mm and 2.0mm that PA-20 has compared to a more evenly spread selection of widths and going up a little larger of PA-21. Any advice on this? I will mainly crimp connectors for the Duet.
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@danal Thanks a lot for your information. I have no success with special crimp tools so far, the wires always slip away after the crimping ;-( and this is very frustrating. I'll try your manual method now, with a cheap tool.
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I use this type:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ratchet-Action-0-08-0-5mm²-Adjustable-Connectors-Ratcheting/dp/B0769H3NWPNot exactly this one as i cant find the no name brand one I bought last time.
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@t3p3tony Thank you for the link. I soldered everything 30 years ago, but today's state of the art seems to be crimping because soldering loosens with time.
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I linked one above that works extremely well and is not expensive at all I recommended it to a NZ Guy in another forum and he got one very quickly and fed back that it was excellent as well here it is again Crimps
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Saw this the other day and found it interesting.
https://hackaday.com/2018/06/26/putting-crimpers-to-the-test-how-good-are-our-crimp-tools/
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@dougal1957 Thank you, I'll try it. I have JST-XH instead of JST-SH, I hope there is not a lot of difference.
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@t3p3tony Dear Tony, I tried your crimp tool, it works quite good for those very small crimps, thank you!
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In finally decided to order the Engineer PA-20 as already bought by @sparkymark79 and for comparison also ordered the IWISS ratcheting crimp tool recommended by @bot. I only read very positive about both of them but I have to admit I immediately fell in love with the manual tool by Engineer. It produces great crimps and even though it will require two actions to perform I was not really slower as with the ratcheting one.
So PA-20 it is for me. Now I just need more stuff to crimp.
Thanks also from me for all your feedback on this topic. It was very interesting to see all the different opinions especially on the really cheap tools.
Manuel
Duet 3 6HC (v0.6) with RPi 4B on a custom Cartesian
with probably always latest firmware/DWC (incl. betas or self-compiled)
My Tool Collection -
@wilriker glad to hear you found a tool you like! Remember to check the crimps to ensure they're good -- you should be able to pull as hard as you can on the wire and it will not move at all from the crimp. I hope your hands don't get too tired after many crimps! Perhaps one or two is easy with the manual set, but after doing 20-60 pins, it can get tiresome.
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@bot Actually I did all crimps for the Duet with small and very uncomfortable pliers in a lot of manual steps for each crimp to ensure they are still well done without a proper crimp tool - after this torture everything is an improvement.
With this new tool I could probably wire up ten Duets in a row and would still be very happy. But yeah, in the end it is always personal preference and if I had to use a crimp tool for work, I would probably also choose something that can do a crimp in one step - but then again the PA-20 is very light compared to the ratcheting tool.
Anyway, I am really happy with my new tool and I am looking forward to the planned rework of all stepper wirings (and maybe even all wiring, not sure about that yet, though).
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P.S.: Regarding the pull-test: It is even advised on the packaging of the PA-20 to do that after having crimped only the pair of wings that will hold the cable. I did not pull as hard as I could but I wasn't particularly easy on them either - and in this case there will be no pulling force on these cables ever except I decide for some reason to pull out a plug by pulling on the cables instead of the housing (which I try to avoid).
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