Seeking Your Ideas about Upcoming Experimenting with Tooling Challenge

I think the cost is the biggest issue for anyone except engineers in a corporate environment - they are hideously expensive.  The Multicomp Pro ones I use, will do dupont, KK crimps really well and cost a tenth of the typical price of a dedicated tool from a named manufacturer like Molex.  I bought a separate Knipex crimper for bootlace ferrules, essentially just a fancy plier, again at a tenth of the typical price.

Nonetheless, that's not really the issue here but how to experiment with them.  It would be easy to fall into just a roadtest - e.g, say, comparing a Molex crimper to the Multicomp Pro crimper, or reporting on how frustratingly pernickety they are to get a good crimp.  It's difficult though because a crimper is really a one-trick pony - it crimps!  So I think Shabaz is on to something: can it create good or good-enough crimps for connectors that it wasn't specifically intended for; can crimp heads from other manufacturers, that one might have on hand, be shoe-horned in and work; could it be worked with a knee whilst both hands are busy holding wire and crimp; could two smaller gauge wires be crimped into one terminal - three??  What about this: could you create a motorised activator - stick the handles into the activator and have it squeeze until the crimping ratchet releases (I think that's gone beyond the bounds of what you are looking for .)

As difficult as it seems at the moment - and I will continue to scratch my head for other ideas - I think it's a great idea to look at them from an experimentation view rather than a roadtest which, to be honest with these types of things, will only tell us that, "yes, it does what it says on the tin".

Hi Andrew,

Regarding motorized activator, that's an interesting point... I think a some of these crimp tools are made in what looks like two separate pieces of functionality, the top head part looks like it could be sold separately for factory automation, and the handle is attached for the manual versions.

At least one Molex tool I have, looks like the head portion is separately manufactured and just requires a centre rod pulled down (i.e. easy to do for a motor) to activate, and the handles convert the lever motion into that centre motion.

I guess that goes a long way to explain the cost, since effectively it's a factory-grade tool for hundreds of thousands of crimps, but are just sold with the handles also attached to make the manual version.

I didn't notice it at first until I saw molex sells "crimping heads." So, I presume you can buy a different head for a different crimp-terminal size, type, etc.

That’s interesting info Shabaz and makes sense. 

That’s interesting info Shabaz and makes sense.