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Factory crimp tool vs cheap crimper, which side are you on?
I had to re-pin a 37-pin D-sub on a King Radio last Tuesday and my usual factory tool was out for calibration. A buddy loaned me his $40 generic crimper and said it was fine for the job. I used it and got a solid pull test on every pin, but I still felt wrong about it. I re-crimped the whole harness with my old tool when it came back, am I just being paranoid about tolerances here? Has anyone else had a cheap crimper fail on them in the field?
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colegarcia13d ago
Actually I read a maintenance bulletin last month from one of the avionics manufacturers that said the main failure point with cheap crimpers is the die wear over time. They don't hold their shape after a few hundred cycles, so you get inconsistent indent depth even if the first fifty pulls test fine. My buddy swears by his generic one for bench work, but he also replaces it every six months like clockwork. That $40 tool might pass today but the crimp height drifts way before you'd notice any visual change. I've seen loose barrel connections cause intermittent nav issues that took forever to trace, all from a crimper that felt fine in the hand. If you're doing one-off harnesses, sure, but for any frequent work I'm sticking with the calibrated stuff.
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