5mm hex crimp

[alan.bain]

In repairing some active probes I find a need for a 5mm hex crimp (approx 0.2") which looks very like the sleeve you see on a crimp BNC plug. A normal RG-58 0.213" one is too large.  I'm trying to think of anything sane that uses this size.  All I could think of were some of the Neutrik SDI connectors (BNC-PG) and I don't have a tool for those and it's too expensive to buy (dies about 200 + tool 150 USD ish)

Is there anything I could have forgotten that might work?

(I always thought it was just the crimper for common connectors like the Harwin Z20-320 that were ludicrously expensive)

[tooki]

I think you haven’t looked very hard yet! Don’t bother looking for connectors, just look at the coaxial crimp tools themselves.

Take a look at the Tempo Communications catalog. It took me 1 minute of browsing the crimp tool section to find a tool (which costs about $50) with a 5.0mm die. (Tempo tools are available from DigiKey, so easy to order from the UK, if you can’t find them locally.)

4.5mm (0.178”) is a common size, too. Maybe it’d work for your application.

Not sure what you’re trying to say about the M20 crimp tool, since it’s not even a coaxial crimper and thus has nothing in common other than being a crimp tool.

[alan.bain]

Thanks.  I always find hunting for correct tools/dies seems to take me much too long. Often quite puzzled why there aren't more direct links on websites between connector and correct hand tool/die (some AdamTech crimp contacts purchased recently even required you to work out what Molex they were a copy of in order to find the right tool).

I've got a PRESSMASTER KCC0908S tool which does 0.178" but that's too small. Thanks for the pointer to Tempo as that led me to the Palladin 1363/66 which supports 0.197". Stupid me searching for a 0.200" one, no wonder no results.

The point about the M20 is that the most common non-RF crimp connectors I see on experimental boards seem to be these DuPont clones and yet the only tool I can find that comes close to crimping them properly is this Z20-320 tool which is very expensive and rarely shows up second user. It seems paradoxical.

[tooki]

Thanks.  I always find hunting for correct tools/dies seems to take me much too long. Often quite puzzled why there aren't more direct links on websites between connector and correct hand tool/die (some AdamTech crimp contacts purchased recently even required you to work out what Molex they were a copy of in order to find the right tool).

I wrote off AdamTech after buying some headers (Molex KK 0.1” style) which were so poorly made that connectors categorically could not mate with them. (They had a step at the end of the locking ramp, so rather than sliding over the ramp as designed, connectors snagged on the step. Literal garbage.) That they’re really short on data is another reason I had already tended to avoid them even before the header fiasco.

Good connector manufacturers provide either a cross-reference to the tool (in which case the tool comes with the assembly instructions) or to the assembly instructions (which will list which tool to use).

IMHO many connector companies have gotten really bad at documentation for the most part, with datasheets/drawings referring to assembly instructions that no longer exist (even by asking customer service). How those fuckers manage to not keep a single copy of their own public documentation boggles the mind. Molex, TE, and Amphenol are all terrible in this regard, especially with products that weren’t released in the past 5 or 10 years. I’m sure mergers are responsible for a lot of the loss.

At my old department, I compiled neatly all the crimping and wire prep instructions for all the connectors they use regularly. Some were trivial to find, others basically required digging up old catalogs that resellers had copied and never took down.

Military connectors are a godsend in this regard: the standards are publicly available (at least, older versions, since they decided to transfer the connector standards to SAE, who demands ransom, err, I mean, fees to see them), the tooling readily available.

JST has all their tooling cross-reference in one single spreadsheet. Super easy.

For newer products, Molex’s website isn’t too bad. The page for a contact almost always has the link to the tooling. For older products they sometimes fail.

TE is… ugh. They theoretically have the tools linked on the contact’s page. But it’s often buried in a huuuge list of tools and accessories, which for some series is hundreds of fiddly little parts. And since their parametric search is so basic as to be thoroughly useless… It’s often better to find a PDF catalog and see if it lists it.

I've got a PRESSMASTER KCC0908S tool which does 0.178" but that's too small. Thanks for the pointer to Tempo as that led me to the Palladin 1363/66 which supports 0.197". Stupid me searching for a 0.200" one, no wonder no results.

That’s the ones I was nudging you to find. Paladin became Greenlee which became Tempo. The current part numbers should be PA1363 and PA1366.

The point about the M20 is that the most common non-RF crimp connectors I see on experimental boards seem to be these DuPont clones and yet the only tool I can find that comes close to crimping them properly is this Z20-320 tool which is very expensive and rarely shows up second user. It seems paradoxical.

There are a few that do it well. The M20 tool is probably the very best (since the Chinese clones see, to be essentially 1:1 clones of M20, just made of inferior materials), but the ones intended for Mini-PV work very well. (I use one made for AMPMODU MOD IV with superb results.)

Have you seen my big thread on this topic (which itself contains links to great resources like Matt Millman’s massive blog posts about it)?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/affordable-crimp-tools-for-small-connectors-(dupont-etc-)/