Blew $200 on a fancy crimper that can't handle Mil-spec wire

Got suckered into buying one of those expensive automatic crimpers last month. Looked great on paper. Took it out to do some D-sub pins on a King radio harness and it wouldn't even close right on 22 gauge. Ended up using my old hand crimpers anyway. Anyone else had bad luck with these auto feed things?

2 comments

2 Comments

grantl941mo ago

Read somewhere those auto crimpers use a different pressure curve than mil-spec requires, so they just mangle the insulation instead of a clean grip. Had a buddy who worked at a repair depot and he said they tested a bunch of those fancy units, then went right back to the Daniels hand tools. For the price of that thing you could have grabbed a proper used batch of D-sub contacts and a decent hand crimper that'll last forever.

margaret_singh11mo ago

Haven't you ever noticed that most of the "upgraded" auto crimpers seem to be aimed at production lines where speed matters more than consistency? I mean yeah the pressure curve thing is real, I've seen the testing data somewhere too. But the real kicker is that the mil-spec standard is literally written around how a human hand works, not a machine. The Daniels tools are basically calibrated for the exact amount of squeeze a person can consistently apply, and that's why they're the gold standard. You don't need a computer to tell you when a contact is seated right, you need the feel in your fingers.