crimping tool for battery cable lugs

[uqunder10s]

I am looking to do some re-wiring over the weekend and have the cable and stuff ready to go but I had to change my pants after I found out the price for a crimp tool to do the lugs.

Does anybody know where you ca hire a crimp tool (manual, ratchet or hydraulic) for crimping lugs on 50mm2 cable?

Or what have others done?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Steve

[murcod]

How much was the tool?

There's a hydraulic one where I work for doing big crimps, but I've never used it.

Your best option could be to get your cables all the right length and then go visit an auto elec place and ask nicely if they can crimp them for you.

[uqunder10s]

Tool was $540

I was thinking about routing the cable and cutting to the appropriate lengths as you suggested but I don't know many sparky's who will be open on Sunday or Monday.

A mate said he used to use teh same sort of tool when he worked for Telstra but he didn't get to keep one when he left.

[Big Red Toy]

i have one which can do up2 120mm lugs but i'm in melbourne so i can't help sorry

[MYTTUF]

Teis is what I've done before;
Heat uo the lug with oxy or similiar and fill with solder then put wire in when solder is liquid and hold in position until solder is hard. Worked for me on more than 1 occasion. Hope that helps.

[murcod]

Yes, I've soldered some of the larger ones before.....

Crimping is the better way to go as the connection is less likely to suffer from vibration/ flexing and break the wire strands over time.

[MYTTUF]

Thats wot a mate said when I was doing it once, but they still work ok.......
Maybe the Koni's on the 80 keep the vibration under control and the joins haven't failed yet.......... We'll see

[chimpboy]

Tap a flat ended screw into it.

[murcod]

Thats wot a mate said when I was doing it once, but they still work ok.......

Highly unlikely it would fail providing you tie them up so they aren't flapping around. I'd much rather do that than do a dodgy crimp- if you haven't got the right crimping tool then don't try to do it another way.....

[DamTriton]

Take it to a yacht fitting chandlery, they use similar tools for swaging the stays of yachts. Prolly $10-20 per join.

[Bluey]

$10 for crimp is heaps. wot about going back to joint where you bought the cable and asking them to do it for you. sorry tho probably doesnt help for this weekend

[tony cordell]

a vice and an old pair of pliers
put the wire in the crimp, the crimp in the pliers(circular grip portion) place in the vice and wind it in squashing the pliers/crimp/wire.
I have done a fair few and it has worked fine. pliers are old ones tho!

[Daisy]

a vice and an old pair of pliers
put the wire in the crimp, the crimp in the pliers(circular grip portion) place in the vice and wind it in squashing the pliers/crimp/wire.
I have done a fair few and it has worked fine. pliers are old ones tho!

Pretty much the way i'd do it.

Always a way around it...

[N*A*M]

use your teeth and bite really hard

[ozhumvee]

I've always soldered them as suggested, if you have access to oxy you can silver solder them with the lowest melting point SS.
Usually I just do them with a porta gas torch then put two bits of appropriately coloured heatshrink over the ends.
I've never had one come undone with soft solder (some were 15 years old) but have had one break/fatigue with SS, suspect too much heat involved.
They never corrode either when soldered and heatshrinked.

[murcod]

The idea of a crimping tool is that the jaws that are specially shaped to fit the crimp, and it also will apply a preset force to the terminal / crimp assembly. This ensure that the terminal assembly will becone one metal mass with no air left in the join. Proper crimping tool are actually checked and calibrated regularly.

If you use a vise and pliers there is no way of knowing for sure what sort of join you've made, nor how long it will last.

The smaller red, blue and yellow auto crimps also are designed so the rear back half will grip onto the wire insulation and provide strain relief (ie. stop the wire from breaking from fatigue due to vibration). It's very important for a reliable join that the tool used is correctly shaped to crush the front half and back half with the required shape and force.

It's very hard to buy decent (red, blue, yellow) crimps- they should have a metal sleeve running all the way through the crimp to grip the insulation. Most don't that you buy at auto accessory shops...

Here's an article on crimping the smaller style crimps, but the priciple is the same for any size: http://www.aeroelectric.com/articles/Cr ... tools.html

[LowRanger]

Yes, I've soldered some of the larger ones before.....

Crimping is the better way to go as the connection is less likely to suffer from vibration/ flexing and break the wire strands over time.

I used to work on electric forklifts,and we were always having trouble with crimped connections onto the Anderson plugs from the machine to the battery,the problems were caused by vibrations,as the forklifts don't have suspension,and have solid wheels.Over a period of time,the weight of the wire itself,along with vibration and moisture from the air caused high resistance connections,which were enough to cause erratic operation of the electronics in the unit.The only way to rectify this was to silver solder the connectors on,but only by filling the lug wth solder and heating the lug,NOT applying heat or solder to the wire itself,and hence causing the wire to become brittle and weak.Have done thousands of these and once done haven't had one connection fail again.

[Shadow]

had always wondered how you guys solder yhour ends on without melting the shit out of your cable lol

will do this to mine, atm i just cramped the fuck out of em with a chisel and hammer, seems to be holding pretty well but i think adding some solder to the equation would make for a much better connection.

[murcod]

As LowRanger said it's the solder wicking up the wire that causes it to go brittle. It's always best to tin the wire before soldering to gain the best join but your method obviously works. I'd be worried about the solder only having taken to the outer most strands?

Possibly the crimps on the Anderson plugs have not been done properly in the first place? Or they should be protected from moisture somehow to prevent corrosion?

I work in the aviation industry and crimps are almost exclusively used in aircraft wiring. As you could imagine a wire breaking in an aircraft electrical system is a very serious matter!

I was taught when soldering smaller sized wire to a terminal to first tin both surfaces. We use "anti wicking" tweezers on the wire to prevent the solder from flowing up the strands - essentially just a heatsink to take the heat away and prevent the solder flowing too far. It's a bit more difficult to do this on battery terminal sized wire though....

[LowRanger]

As Murcod mentioned,I too was always taught to tin the wire before soldering.I still use this principle when soldering thin wires or electrical components.Except when connecting wires about 10mm or thicker to terminals.The connections that are used on Anderson plugs have to be extremely good as depending of the type of charger used,a drop of 1 micro volt can be enough to not let let charger activate,hence not charge.As far as only the outer strands taking to the solder,the few that I have taken apart have always shown that the molten solder had taken right through to the core.As far as the crimps being not done correctly,they are far too numerous ,and done by different companies over a vast period of time.But I do grant you that they operate in a very harsh environment,but so is a 4wd and the places we like to take them
I have used this type of procedure on all my winch cableing over a lot of years and never had a problem.Heavy cable,I have found has a habit of working crimped joints loose under their own weight due to vibration.

[Area54]

Quite often the problem with (lead, cold) soldering is that too much heat is used and this burns (the flux or rosin) and contaminates the rarefied surfaces for the solder to bond to. I solder all my connections (I was taught correctly by a RAAF mate) of all sizes, not that I don't trust crimps, I prefer the clean solid connection of a soldered joint. With the larger cables, I use an old skool copper block solder iron heated by the torch, sometimes clean the cable with some liquid solder flux (always remove any residue - can be corrosive over time) tin the cable and the fitting, join and fill, heat the fitting not the cable, heat will travel fairly well. Ive (cold) soldered copper to steel, steel to steel, copper to aluminium, steel to aluminium.

[CHOOFA]

At my work we crimp all cables because if there is a loose connection on the fitment it creates heat an can melt the solder joint as it has happened in the past but since we have been crimping them we have had no problems.

[berazafi]

go to bunnings buy the tool use it then return it saying it isnt what you required, or just take it in there and ask one of the staff todo it for you, they are very helpful in bunnings (well sometimes)

[mr Z]

I am looking to do some re-wiring over the weekend and have the cable and stuff ready to go but I had to change my pants after I found out the price for a crimp tool to do the lugs.

Does anybody know where you ca hire a crimp tool (manual, ratchet or hydraulic) for crimping lugs on 50mm2 cable?

Or what have others done?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Steve

50mm2 cable?

what are you wiring?

[Shadow]

I am looking to do some re-wiring over the weekend and have the cable and stuff ready to go but I had to change my pants after I found out the price for a crimp tool to do the lugs.

Does anybody know where you ca hire a crimp tool (manual, ratchet or hydraulic) for crimping lugs on 50mm2 cable?

Or what have others done?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Steve

50mm2 cable?

what are you wiring?

thats what 8 mm dia or something?

at first i thaught "50mm" diametre, must be wiring a power plant lol.

[Wendle]

i have taken them to ARB before and they have done them for free