Found pro AMP pliers/press but are they obsolete ?

[Kjelt]

Hi all,

a good friend of mine passed away a year ago and to make a long story short, his widow gave me a few boxes of AMP stuff.
In them are two of these really nice pro AMP pliers which were new over $1000 each and one huge hydraulic press for some end connectors.
These pliers are made for some specific AMP connector, one I do not know the other the HD20 connector which some are on a spool with the plier.

Now my main question for the specialists: are these pliers only usable for these old school connectors, making it obsolete and useless or is there a way to adjust them so I can use them for instance for my JST XH and other connectors?

thanks.

[TerraHertz]

Tools like that are never obsolete. There's always someone needing such things, no matter how specialized they are.
Why don't you try selling them on ebay, if you have no use for them yourself?

[Kjelt]

Yes I could do that, but I have no idea about the asking price.
The widow could really use the money and a quick google I found out that the hydraulic press is much used in cars and airplane cable manufacturing and that this press new is around $4000. Do you have any idea what to ask for these pliers or do you suggest to post as an auction?

[TerraHertz]

Yes I could do that, but I have no idea about the asking price.
The widow could really use the money and a quick google I found out that the hydraulic press is much used in cars and airplane cable manufacturing and that this press new is around $4000. Do you have any idea what to ask for these pliers or do you suggest to post as an auction?

I'm sorry I have no personal experience buying those kind of things. Only a couple of cheap Asian hydraulic crimpers and a punch. But I'm sure someone around here will have an idea.
As for ebay, some suggestions:
 - If you can find part numbers for the tools (and the roll of pins) try setting continuous ebay searches for those specific terms, and also more general searches. Then if those of anything like them come up, you'll see how they go in terms of demand and price.
 - Maybe put up for Buy It Now at a high price (say 1/3 to 1/2 of new price?) but with 'make an offer' enabled. See how many people are interested. IIRC, no fee if it doesn't sell.

[Kjelt]

Trying to modify the 169424 to crimp DuPonts. But I think I need to make some extra supports to keep the Duponts from falling off or bending during the press. The die shape with one M for the conductor wire and half circle for the isolator seems perfect. Crimps are also okish due to positioning.

Anyone who can post the correct support insert for a Dupont connector?

[tooki]

What do the DuPont crimps made with it look like now?

From your original photos, it looks like this crimper (which is for D-sub) was being used with strip-form MOD IV contacts, whose crimp dimensions are extremely similar to those of DuPont.

Since these crimpers are made for contacts on strips, they never had locators for loose (individual) contacts.

To answer your very old question about using these for JST XH: not a chance. The dimensions of XH are very different, so it’s impossible to crimp them without crushing the contact.

[Kjelt]

Hi Tooki,

This afternoon I spent some hours modifying the 734203 crimper so I could crimp chinese dupont connectors.
After removing two vertical metal plates which unfortunately had to cut off, it now seems to partly work fine for the dupont connectors.

What does not work is the yellow auto feed slider which would have to bring the next component exactly in line with the crimpdie.
However the index notch is worn down and also the spacing of the connectors and the index hole positions on the carrier are different.
Still I have a semi automatic solution now, using a plier to pull on the ejected carrier strip to the right, till the next connector is in line with the die.
Then put the wire in and press and it also automatically cuts the connector from the carrier.
I am super happy with it since this makes the process much easier. And these are el cheapo chinese dupont connectors.

I do not have a digital microscope (only analogue) but the crimp really looks good, so this is about the closes I could get a picture of the crimp (yes I know I have to strip the wires shorter they are a bit too long) and the round flaps are there holding the isolation correctly and also the wirecrimp is pretty solid.
Too bad this crimper only has one die for 0.12-0.14mm and the wire shown is 0.25mm2 still works good enough for my hobby electronics 


As you know the Duponts are not that great connectors, I use the JST XH more, better contacts, polarity guaranteed and cheap. Yes the more I think about it, €320 is worth it.

Thanks Tooki.

[tooki]

This afternoon I spent some hours modifying the 734203 crimper so I could crimp chinese dupont connectors.
After removing two vertical metal plates which unfortunately had to cut off, it now seems to partly work fine for the dupont connectors.

I actually see in my post in the giant “What did you buy today?” thread, where I originally shared my purchase of my MOD IV crimper, that I had to remove a metal plate to make it work with DuPont. I think it’s a further anti-rotation device to help prevent miscrimps. I’d honestly forgotten about this!

As you know the Duponts are not that great connectors, I use the JST XH more, better contacts, polarity guaranteed and cheap. Yes the more I think about it, €320 is worth it.

Chinese DuPont clones are of highly variable quality, but never the best. However, the original DuPont connector (Amphenol Mini-PV, which at one point was owned by DuPont) is the gold standard in 0.1” header connectors. They cost 20x as much per contact as Chinese clones, but last literally 300x as long without getting loose. The crimp area of a Mini-PV contact looks practically identical to a clone, but before crimping, the crimp wings are open much wider, making them more difficult to crimp with tools intended for clones or competing products like MOD IV or Molex SL. (If you first squeeze the Mini-PV insulation wings to make them narrower, it works.) I’ve been progressively remaking my female DuPont test leads using Mini-PV.

Of course, using MOD IV contacts in your MOD IV tool is a superb option, but of course you have to use AMPMODU housings with them.

Finally, another very interesting option are Harwin M20: they look absolutely identical to Chinese DuPont, but they perform far, far better. They don’t lose their grip after 2-3 insertions like the generic Chinese crap.

As for JST XH, I have been thinking about buying the genuine tool myself, because I quite like that connector. But there are also other JST connectors (like XA and PA) that I’ve been considering instead, due to there existing wire-to-wire versions of some of the others, whereas XH is strictly wire-to-board and board-to-board.

[Kjelt]

Finally, another very interesting option are Harwin M20: they look absolutely identical to Chinese DuPont, but they perform far, far better.

Any recommendations where to purchase them ?

As for JST XH, I have been thinking about buying the genuine tool myself, because I quite like that connector. But there are also other JST connectors (like XA and PA) that I’ve been considering instead, due to there existing wire-to-wire versions of some of the others, whereas XH is strictly wire-to-board and board-to-board.

I put down the order last night, it is a lot of money but once spent a joy to use.
Indeed if you need more than one crimper it will hurt...

Talking about the XH connector I wanted to order new extra connectors but there are now three versions according to the datasheet.
One (N version SXH-001T-P0.6N) is for a more loose connection, for connectors that you have to exchange often, could be pretty useful during experimenting but not for me.

Then TME has one that is not mentioned in the document, the BXH version:
BXH-001T-P0.6 phosphor bronze; tinned; 0.08÷0.34mm2; 28AWG÷22AWG

Any idea what the difference is with the SXH version ?

[tooki]

Harwin M20 are available from all the major distributors (Digikey, Mouser, Farnell, RS).

BXH and SXH are the exact same contacts, just BXH are loose contacts, SXH are on strips. I highly recommend spending extra for the loose ones, since XH contacts are so small to begin with, separating them from the strip is annoying.

Of the three XH contacts in the datasheet, only one is of interest, and that’s the one the WC-110 tool is designed for: the BXH-001T-P0.6 you mentioned from TME. (It’s also widely available from most distributors.) The -N low force version and the -002- version for extra thin wires are not compatible with the WC-110.

If you order from JST directly, which has really great prices by the way, they actually do have further contact versions not even mentioned in the datasheet, like ones made of brass (don’t get those), and gold-plated ones (use only with gold-plated headers, also available only from JST directly). They also carry the headers and housings in more colors.

P.S. The low-force XH contacts are to make assembly easier on high-pin-count connectors. It’s a completely different contact shape, one which I believe is not designed for as many mating cycles. I don’t see any reason to bother with these.

[Kjelt]

Thanks Tooki for all the good info!