Awesomely presented James. Great to see the detail that you go into with your explaining, and also that you didn't edit out the reality of the fiddly challenge we sometimes face when crimping each pin. :-) Great stuff!
Thanks! I try to leave my mistakes in (although I sometimes time compress the troubleshooting for obvious reasons) as I always find it more valuable and reassuring in other videos to see the issues.
Thanks for this tutorial, it was illuminating, with excellent detail. I eventually purchased an IWISS SN-2549 as it supports four different pin sizes and on balance had good reviews. Mechanically the alignment is just a bit different from your tool: the pin has to be aligned such that the rearmost (insulation) end is flush with the front face of the tool. This places that little square nub, used for fixing the pin to the shell, just beyond the rear face of the tool. As *DodgeDeBoulet* mentioned, because of this flush alignment, it's much easier if you leave a T-shaped portion of the reel still attached to the pin, and press that portion flush to the edge of the jaw, just before crimping. It snaps off easily, after the crimp. It's a bit tricky at first, but you can first insert the wire into the pin, and then insert the pin into the tool, grasping the edge of the T-shaped portion. After a few pins, it becomes second-nature. You do have to gently bend the tines for the insulation portion to be parallel before crimping, as they are a bit splayed as manufactured, and will otherwise turn a bit as you crimp, mangling the pin, and force you to use language your mother would rather you didn't.
A suggestion: Don't remove the carrier strip from the pins before crimping; clip the pins apart along the carrier and leave the short piece of carrier attached.This helps greatly in aligning the pin in the jaws of the crimping tool (the edge of the strip goes flush against the jaws), and provides a guide against which the wire can be inserted. The carrier can be snapped off after the crimp is complete. I also start the crimp before inserting the wire, and find that I can "feel" where the insulation impinges on the portion of the crimp that grips the conductor; I find this to be less aggravating since the pins no longer have the option of bolting for their freedom. But of course YMMV ...
Interesting, I'll give that a try. I've tried a few different methods for getting the depth right, messing that up seems to be the biggest cause of failures for most people.
Really useful! It took me from klutz to crimping competency in a day. Another tip. Lock one arm of the crimper in a vice. Then you have two hands free to do the set up and when good to go you just have to punch down the lever.
Thanks for the microscope shots James! That really made it clear what I'm trying to do. (I'm legally blind, so … I'm trying to do it basically by feel because I can't realistically do it under magnification.) I've managed to make solid enough mechanical connection, but I often can't get the housings to snap into place. I can see why now-I'm mangling the pins-and how to … not do that.
I get my crimpers tomorrow. It's been a few decades since I last made cables. Miles of RS232, RJ11 and cat5, a little co-ax but our coax crimper sucked and thankfully that was Appletalk years so there wasn't much co-ax. This should help.
I don't think it was mentioned but one can also remove pins from these cables when necessary by lifting the plastic clip that holds the pin in and sliding the pin out. I've found this useful on occasion, for example, swapping the transmit and receive pins on a serial connection.
Yes! I've done that a few times. Mostly to rework a custom cable but occasional to rehouse one the cat chewed! I keep my cpu build out of cat reach after that discovery!
TIL there is a tool to do this... I've been soldering the wires and crimping the isolation using plain pliers... and I was sure I *knew* how to make these cables. Thanks !
Thanks for this! I bought a crimp tool and had no luck with it. Looking at yours, I see mine has the top and bottom jaws reversed. But they can be changed so I'll try that. What I've done most of the time is buy pre-made dupont cables which have each pin housed as singles. I take the pins out of the 1x housing and put them in Nx housings from the crimp kit.
I flipped the jaws, tried a crimp and found mine is designed differently. Yours has the valley be the pin base or bottom, mine the valley is doing the crimping. Either way, I couldn't get the pin to stay in the crimper so I could feed the wire, then crimp. I figured out a technique though: Without anything in it, bring the crimper down 1 click. I could then feed the pin through the side until it stops, then the wire. Complete the crimp. Now to see if with the 1 click method, if it is easier with the jaws set where the open face of the pin is up, or down.
Ha! I've actually been doing that recently, much quicker than making my own cables from scratch. I only do that now if I want a length that's different.
You make it look to easy. Nice guide. I dont know if my crimper is not good, or I need to practice more, but mine never come out this well. If I need it to be a safe connection, I will crimp it with simpler non ratcheting crimping tools or even needle nose plyers.
Was just making some of these and was having a hard time inserting the female connections onto the male headers on an arduino. @4:10 when you describe pulling it ahead, I think that was my mistake. I think I have been compressing the part where the pins go INTO the connector hence why they stick out like 1-2mm from the connector. I will try again. First time :D I knew i'd make mistakes though :D :D :D
I sometimes feel like a charlatan talking about things I’m not an expert in, this was one of those situation where there was some basic info that I hadn’t found easily in a search that would have helped me.
Love your work man! I was wondering: where do you buy your cables? I can only find flat cables with certain amount of lines, for instance, 10 or 25. Do you take such cables and cut them to make, for instance, cables that have 4 lines? Is that even possible?
Thanks Jelle! The ribbon cables are really easy, once you get it started they split easily along the seam between insulators. The grey ones in my build started out life as much wider cables from eBay.
excellent video.. i was hand crimping them.. yea.. not fun.. due to following another video that didnt really "show" exactly how to line up the crimper.. sadly seen your video after hand crimping 30 crimps.. my eyes hurt.. lol.. thanks and thumbs up!
James, what do you use for striping the jumper wires for the breadboards? All I see when you've been creating them on screen is what looks like your twisting something around the wire once you've determined how long it needs to be. Also what gauge wire do you use for the jumpers? Thanks, Drew
My wire strippers don’t work well on the solid core wire, it tends to tear the insulation a bit more randomly. I believe there are other kinds that work better but I haven’t investigated. What I’m using is a craft knife blade, I just score round the insulation and then pull the insulation off the end*. The wire I’m using at the moment was sold on ebay as “1/0.6mm equipment hookup wire”. I did buy the “adafruit hook-up wire spool set” but that has thicker insulation and fitting 8 wires in close proximity gets difficult.
*If I’m making a very short wire (like a power or ground one) I score at the length I want to keep, pull the rest of and then slide the remaining bit into the middle. Speeds things up a bit.
You haven't lived until you've crimped a finger. My wirestrippers seems to have a free fingertip removing tool nestled in between the two handles so that keep the work spicy. Still not sure what you would actually use it for beyond stripping 30A cable :)
Thanks for the suggestion, I actually started doing that but for me the cables are more reliable this way. When you hold the pin in the crimp tool it makes it far more difficult to get the right amount of insulating sleeve onto the top of the pin. If you go to far you don't make a connection, if you don't go far enough the wire is weak because it's gripping wire rather than sleeve.
I'm questioning one thing : Isn't using your fingers to straighten the conductor damaging ? I'm not saying you have dirty fingers, but no matter how hard you scrub, you can't prevent greasy and acidic products to seep from your skin - thus leading to almost instantaneous corrosion and long term loss of conductive performance.. Maybe you should dip the wires in some sort of solution to make the contacts more solid (just guessing, I am absolutely no expert)
You could be right, but I don't think so and I certainly haven't hit problems (some of the dupont cables I've made are several years old and still working fine). The worst thing for these types of conductors is oxygen and you mostly relying on the crimp being so tight the metals are squished against each other. Worth thinking about though.
@@weirdboyjim I absolutely admire your work ! Not only is the ALU, memory access, and of course - the pipelining - absolutely astounding - and it is WAY over my head ! I'm a 6502 generation guy - but also an IBM mainframe era guy (yeah.. those things already had in the early 1970s pipelining, 32 bit registers, a MMU, generalized asynchronous I/O operations).. I usually work on the software side (emulation) but those hardware quirks you put in place are giving me a lot of ideas when emulating an IA...
Awesomely presented James. Great to see the detail that you go into with your explaining, and also that you didn't edit out the reality of the fiddly challenge we sometimes face when crimping each pin. :-) Great stuff!
Thanks! I try to leave my mistakes in (although I sometimes time compress the troubleshooting for obvious reasons) as I always find it more valuable and reassuring in other videos to see the issues.
Thanks for this tutorial, it was illuminating, with excellent detail. I eventually purchased an IWISS SN-2549 as it supports four different pin sizes and on balance had good reviews. Mechanically the alignment is just a bit different from your tool: the pin has to be aligned such that the rearmost (insulation) end is flush with the front face of the tool. This places that little square nub, used for fixing the pin to the shell, just beyond the rear face of the tool. As *DodgeDeBoulet* mentioned, because of this flush alignment, it's much easier if you leave a T-shaped portion of the reel still attached to the pin, and press that portion flush to the edge of the jaw, just before crimping. It snaps off easily, after the crimp.
It's a bit tricky at first, but you can first insert the wire into the pin, and then insert the pin into the tool, grasping the edge of the T-shaped portion. After a few pins, it becomes second-nature.
You do have to gently bend the tines for the insulation portion to be parallel before crimping, as they are a bit splayed as manufactured, and will otherwise turn a bit as you crimp, mangling the pin, and force you to use language your mother would rather you didn't.
I might try and look at the IWISS SN-2549 at some point.
A suggestion: Don't remove the carrier strip from the pins before crimping; clip the pins apart along the carrier and leave the short piece of carrier attached.This helps greatly in aligning the pin in the jaws of the crimping tool (the edge of the strip goes flush against the jaws), and provides a guide against which the wire can be inserted. The carrier can be snapped off after the crimp is complete.
I also start the crimp before inserting the wire, and find that I can "feel" where the insulation impinges on the portion of the crimp that grips the conductor; I find this to be less aggravating since the pins no longer have the option of bolting for their freedom. But of course YMMV ...
Interesting, I'll give that a try. I've tried a few different methods for getting the depth right, messing that up seems to be the biggest cause of failures for most people.
Really useful!
It took me from klutz to crimping competency in a day.
Another tip. Lock one arm of the crimper in a vice. Then you have two hands free to do the set up and when good to go you just have to punch down the lever.
Good to hear it was useful! Using a vice sounds good, I'll try it if I get one!
Thanks for the microscope shots James! That really made it clear what I'm trying to do. (I'm legally blind, so … I'm trying to do it basically by feel because I can't realistically do it under magnification.) I've managed to make solid enough mechanical connection, but I often can't get the housings to snap into place. I can see why now-I'm mangling the pins-and how to … not do that.
Glad it helped!
I get my crimpers tomorrow. It's been a few decades since I last made cables. Miles of RS232, RJ11 and cat5, a little co-ax but our coax crimper sucked and thankfully that was Appletalk years so there wasn't much co-ax. This should help.
Hope that goes well!
I don't think it was mentioned but one can also remove pins from these cables when necessary by lifting the plastic clip that holds the pin in and sliding the pin out. I've found this useful on occasion, for example, swapping the transmit and receive pins on a serial connection.
Yes! I've done that a few times. Mostly to rework a custom cable but occasional to rehouse one the cat chewed! I keep my cpu build out of cat reach after that discovery!
Thanks, it's not easy stuff, thanks for sharing.
No problem 👍
TIL there is a tool to do this... I've been soldering the wires and crimping the isolation using plain pliers... and I was sure I *knew* how to make these cables. Thanks !
I first bought shells and pins, the tool makes it massively easier!
Thanks for this!
I bought a crimp tool and had no luck with it.
Looking at yours, I see mine has the top and bottom jaws reversed.
But they can be changed so I'll try that.
What I've done most of the time is buy pre-made dupont cables which have each pin housed as singles. I take the pins out of the 1x housing and put them in Nx housings from the crimp kit.
I flipped the jaws, tried a crimp and found mine is designed differently. Yours has the valley be the pin base or bottom, mine the valley is doing the crimping.
Either way, I couldn't get the pin to stay in the crimper so I could feed the wire, then crimp.
I figured out a technique though:
Without anything in it, bring the crimper down 1 click. I could then feed the pin through the side until it stops, then the wire.
Complete the crimp.
Now to see if with the 1 click method, if it is easier with the jaws set where the open face of the pin is up, or down.
Looking more closely at the video, you do have the pin upside-down in the valley (open side face down into the valley)
Ha! I've actually been doing that recently, much quicker than making my own cables from scratch. I only do that now if I want a length that's different.
You make it look to easy. Nice guide. I dont know if my crimper is not good, or I need to practice more, but mine never come out this well. If I need it to be a safe connection, I will crimp it with simpler non ratcheting crimping tools or even needle nose plyers.
Might be tool issue obviously. Make sure the pin is seated right in the tool, and make sure the insulation doesn't go beyond the first bit of the pin.
@@weirdboyjim Thanks, will definitely rewatch this when doing my next crimping job.
P.S. Where did my heart go? Damn, haha.
@@eraldylli The original one was a misclick, far too close to reply! But you can have one here ;-)
Very helpful, thanks for sharing. Dupont are a pain! LOL
Yeah, took me a while to get it right!
amzn.to/3qzgzV8 (USA Amazon, Looks like the same kit)
amzn.to/2VtCI93 (UK Amazon, This is exact kit used in this video).
That’s great. Where do you get extra cable? Everything I’ve found on Amazon is IDC cable which is too thin for Dupont, apparently.
Hi, thank you very much for the video it is very helpful.
Where can I get those kind of connectors, dupont connectors?
If you search for "dupont kit" on ebay there are usually lots of sellers for the base kit I have been using. I just buy extras of the bits I use up.
Was just making some of these and was having a hard time inserting the female connections onto the male headers on an arduino. @4:10 when you describe pulling it ahead, I think that was my mistake. I think I have been compressing the part where the pins go INTO the connector hence why they stick out like 1-2mm from the connector. I will try again. First time :D I knew i'd make mistakes though :D :D :D
Hope it was useful! Much easier when you get used to it.
Thanks, this was helpful!
I sometimes feel like a charlatan talking about things I’m not an expert in, this was one of those situation where there was some basic info that I hadn’t found easily in a search that would have helped me.
what is the name of crimp please reply
The crimping tool? It is a "SN-28B"
really helpful - thanks!
Thanks! Glad it helped Jim.
I struggle making them as I keep knocking the pins out of the tool!
I feel your pain. I just about got my technique consistently working and then send the first pin on camera flying.
@@weirdboyjim When you have you pin positioned in the tool how you want it, have you tried closing the crimper just enough to hold the pin in place?
JetGyrotech I started of doing that but it’s harder to gauge how far in you have poked the wire.
Love your work man! I was wondering: where do you buy your cables? I can only find flat cables with certain amount of lines, for instance, 10 or 25. Do you take such cables and cut them to make, for instance, cables that have 4 lines? Is that even possible?
Thanks Jelle! The ribbon cables are really easy, once you get it started they split easily along the seam between insulators. The grey ones in my build started out life as much wider cables from eBay.
excellent video.. i was hand crimping them.. yea.. not fun.. due to following another video that didnt really "show" exactly how to line up the crimper.. sadly seen your video after hand crimping 30 crimps.. my eyes hurt.. lol.. thanks and thumbs up!
Glad it was useful!
James, what do you use for striping the jumper wires for the breadboards? All I see when you've been creating them on screen is what looks like your twisting something around the wire once you've determined how long it needs to be. Also what gauge wire do you use for the jumpers? Thanks, Drew
My wire strippers don’t work well on the solid core wire, it tends to tear the insulation a bit more randomly. I believe there are other kinds that work better but I haven’t investigated. What I’m using is a craft knife blade, I just score round the insulation and then pull the insulation off the end*. The wire I’m using at the moment was sold on ebay as “1/0.6mm equipment hookup wire”. I did buy the “adafruit hook-up wire spool set” but that has thicker insulation and fitting 8 wires in close proximity gets difficult.
*If I’m making a very short wire (like a power or ground one) I score at the length I want to keep, pull the rest of and then slide the remaining bit into the middle. Speeds things up a bit.
You haven't lived until you've crimped a finger. My wirestrippers seems to have a free fingertip removing tool nestled in between the two handles so that keep the work spicy. Still not sure what you would actually use it for beyond stripping 30A cable :)
Lol, I'm looking for a wire strippers that can handle more delicate wires. Mine tend to shred the fine bits.
if you put the pin into the crimper hold it with one click, then put the wire in it holds it
Thanks for the suggestion, I actually started doing that but for me the cables are more reliable this way. When you hold the pin in the crimp tool it makes it far more difficult to get the right amount of insulating sleeve onto the top of the pin. If you go to far you don't make a connection, if you don't go far enough the wire is weak because it's gripping wire rather than sleeve.
Thank you.
You're welcome!
I'm questioning one thing : Isn't using your fingers to straighten the conductor damaging ? I'm not saying you have dirty fingers, but no matter how hard you scrub, you can't prevent greasy and acidic products to seep from your skin - thus leading to almost instantaneous corrosion and long term loss of conductive performance.. Maybe you should dip the wires in some sort of solution to make the contacts more solid (just guessing, I am absolutely no expert)
You could be right, but I don't think so and I certainly haven't hit problems (some of the dupont cables I've made are several years old and still working fine). The worst thing for these types of conductors is oxygen and you mostly relying on the crimp being so tight the metals are squished against each other. Worth thinking about though.
@@weirdboyjim I absolutely admire your work ! Not only is the ALU, memory access, and of course - the pipelining - absolutely astounding - and it is WAY over my head ! I'm a 6502 generation guy - but also an IBM mainframe era guy (yeah.. those things already had in the early 1970s pipelining, 32 bit registers, a MMU, generalized asynchronous I/O operations).. I usually work on the software side (emulation) but those hardware quirks you put in place are giving me a lot of ideas when emulating an IA...
nice zoom camera!
The Microscope? Yeah, it was only a cheap one of ebay but it's served me well.
I hate to tell you, but that is not how you crimp those things
I assure you, that is how I crimp those things. If you have a better method everyone would appreciate you sharing.