Cable crimping tools

[Lochwarden]

Hi, I’m looking for recommendations for decent battery cable crimping/cutting/stripping tool/tools please. Thanks.

[jake_crew]

For battery terminals you need a hydraulic tool.  Various are available on Ebay for  around £100.   I can't recommend a make as such as the one I used was ex British Rail.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

A proper professional hydraulic one is ideal, if you are making up lots of cables. For the occasional use, then a vice, or hammer powered crimper is surprisingly good, for a lot less money. Never had a problem with any cables made with mine.

https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/heavy-duty-spring-loaded-hammervice-terminal-crimping-tool.html

 

[Bargebuilder]

5 minutes ago, jake_crew said:

For battery terminals you need a hydraulic tool.  Various are available on Ebay for  around £100.   I can't recommend a make as such as the one I used was ex British Rail.

Actually, I bought a brand new 8t hydraulic crimper from eBay for less than £30 and they are still available from a number of retailers. It came with a wide range of interchangeable heads and it produces a very neat, strong crimp for cables up to 70mm². Superb value for money!

 

I now use my MC4 crimpers for all my crimping of thinner tri-rated type cables, because the profile of each crimping hole grips the strands better than does a standard crimper: if you look closely you will see what I mean. A pair of these will also cost £30 from eBay.

[GUMPY]

I have an eBay hydraulic crimper*,  I prefer to use my 40year old BICC manual crimper as it makes better joints.

 

* Crimper is looking for a new home needs postage costs covering.

[David Schweizer]

38 minutes ago, jake_crew said:

For battery terminals you need a hydraulic tool.  Various are available on Ebay for  around £100.   I can't recommend a make as such as the one I used was ex British Rail.

 

I soldered mine with a gas torch, they never failed.

 

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by David Schweizer

[MtB]

1 minute ago, David Schweizer said:

 

I soldered mine, with a gas torch, they never failed.

 

 

Stand by for an avalanche of posts saying soldering joints is a recipe for trouble! 

 

Meanwhile back here in the real world, plenty of people find it works fine. 

 

 

[Bargebuilder]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

 

Stand by for an avalanche of posts saying soldering joints is a recipe for trouble! 

 

Meanwhile back here in the real world, plenty of people find it works fine. 

 

 

To start the avalanche: solder after a good crimping is okay as a belt and braces approach, but I certainly would rely solely on solder alone on a boat.

[David Schweizer]

58 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Stand by for an avalanche of posts saying soldering joints is a recipe for trouble! 

 

Meanwhile back here in the real world, plenty of people find it works fine. 

 

 

 

If soldered terminals fail, it is usually because it is not done correctly. You need to use proper traditional solder with flux, and fully tin the cable first, getting it really hot, before attempting to connect the terminal.  It requires a great more skill than a crimping device, but people are always looking for a quick and easy result these days. The soldered battery cables terminals on Helvetia were still sound after twenty years.

[robtheplod]

I've got one of these which seems to do the trick.. certainly handled all my 95mm battery/invertor crimps...

 

KATSU 12 Tons Hydraulic Crimping Tool 10-120mm² with 8 Steel Dies, Manual High Pressure Hydraulic Electric Cable Tool Kit for Copper and Aluminum Terminal Lugs Battery Wire Crimping 416372 : Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools

[Tracy D'arth]

Hammer/vice type available on The auction site for less than a tenner.

Hydraulic for less than £17

[BEngo]

If you buy a Chinese one make a test crimp of the sizes you are going to use.  Some of the dies under squeeze the terminal. That is a recipe for overheated terminals.  Others over squeeze but that just produces flash feathers on the terminal and does at least make a good crimp.

 

Aerospace gave up soldered terminals many years ago.  For good reasons.

 

N

[Alan de Enfield]

The RCD ISO specification gives a handy table to ensure you have correctly crimped the wires;

 

Pull out forces :

 

 

[jonathanA]

43 minutes ago, BEngo said:

If you buy a Chinese one make a test crimp of the sizes you are going to use.  Some of the dies under squeeze the terminal. That is a recipe for overheated terminals.  Others over squeeze but that just produces flash feathers on the terminal and does at least make a good crimp.

 

Aerospace gave up soldered terminals many years ago.  For good reasons.

 

N

I think selecting the right terminal is also important,  unfortunately its not easy to tell whether you are getting one designed for flex or not or indeed solder...

 

in my (limited) experience the cheapo chinese crimpers are ok up to 16 or maybe 25mm but after than you really need a professional one (even if just to 'finish off') my £100+ professional job goes to 120MM and also stamps the size into the finished crimp. 

 

I doubt many canal boats are built to aerospace specifications and very few of us on here have aerospace quality crimping toolsets with their eye watering cost and usually very limited application, usually restricted to a single manufacturer and single product line 

[Bargebuilder]

3 hours ago, David Schweizer said:

You need to use proper traditional solder with flux, and fully tin the cable first, getting it really hot, before attempting to connect the terminal.  It requires a great more skill than a crimping device, but people are always looking for a quick and easy result these days.

You are quite right to say that getting all the strands of a 70 or 95mm² flex hot enough to flux and tin adequately is difficult. There is a risk also that in doing so the heated strands may become more brittle and liable to fracture in time.

 

Not only is a properly crimped terminal, as you say quicker and easier than soldering, it is also mechanically preferable. I'm not aware of any UK equivalent standards for boat wiring, but in the good old USA, the American Boat and Yacht Council in their standard E-11, state that solder should not be used as a sole method of connection, whereas crimping can, and is indeed the advised method.

[ditchcrawler]

21 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

You are quite right to say that getting all the strands of a 70 or 95mm² flex hot enough to flux and tin adequately is difficult. There is a risk also that in doing so the heated strands may become more brittle and liable to fracture in time.

 

Not only is a properly crimped terminal, as you say quicker and easier than soldering, it is also mechanically preferable. I'm not aware of any UK equivalent standards for boat wiring, but in the good old USA, the American Boat and Yacht Council in their standard E-11, state that solder should not be used as a sole method of connection, whereas crimping can, and is indeed the advised method.

But they dont have canal boats

[Tonka]

48 minutes ago, jonathanA said:

I think selecting the right terminal is also important,  unfortunately its not easy to tell whether you are getting one designed for flex or not or indeed solder...

 

in my (limited) experience the cheapo chinese crimpers are ok up to 16 or maybe 25mm but after than you really need a professional one (even if just to 'finish off') my £100+ professional job goes to 120MM and also stamps the size into the finished crimp. 

 

I doubt many canal boats are built to aerospace specifications and very few of us on here have aerospace quality crimping toolsets with their eye watering cost and usually very limited application, usually restricted to a single manufacturer and single product line 

Why would they want an aluminium built narrowboat built from Alclad

[Slim]

1 hour ago, BEngo said:

If you buy a Chinese one make a test crimp of the sizes you are going to use.  Some of the dies under squeeze the terminal. That is a recipe for overheated terminals.  Others over squeeze but that just produces flash feathers on the terminal and does at least make a good crimp.

 

Aerospace gave up soldered terminals many years ago.  For good reasons.

 

N

When I did my fitout I borrowed a professional mechanical crimper and produced a first class job.  Fast forward a few years and I needed a crimper again. I bought a Chinese hydraulic one (available now for about about £30). It does a fair job provided that you  select  the formers ignoring their stated size. Normally need one size down. 

[magnetman]

It was so much easier when engines had starting handles and there were no big inverters. 

 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, Bargebuilder said:

'm not aware of any UK equivalent standards for boat wiring,

 

I posted an extract from one earlier :

Edited July 13, 2023 by Alan de Enfield

[GUMPY]

1 hour ago, Slim said:

When I did my fitout I borrowed a professional mechanical crimper and produced a first class job.  Fast forward a few years and I needed a crimper again. I bought a Chinese hydraulic one (available now for about about £30). It does a fair job provided that you  select  the formers ignoring their stated size. Normally need one size down. 

Agree totally with this hence I reverted to my 40 year old one. 

[Tony1]

7 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

A proper professional hydraulic one is ideal, if you are making up lots of cables. For the occasional use, then a vice, or hammer powered crimper is surprisingly good, for a lot less money. Never had a problem with any cables made with mine.

https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/heavy-duty-spring-loaded-hammervice-terminal-crimping-tool.html

 

 

I did a major rearranging of my 12v electrics (installing two MPPTs and two B2Bs, plus many associated bits) and I used one of those hammer-driven crimping tools.

There is the slight hassle of stepping aside to find a place to put it whilst banging the hammer down on it, but I found it worked really well.

I appreciate that as a Morlock you probably prefer to involve a more violent tool like a hammer. But as a peace loving Eloi, I bought myself one of those cheap hydraulic crimpers for about £40,  and I'm not at all happy with the results.

In fairness, being an eloi means I'm probably not using it properly, but for me the hammer crimp made a really secure fixing of the lugs, and I've gone back to using it for my latest project of tidying up the cable runs in the electric cupboard. 

 

Also OP, you'll need a small hot air gun thingy to apply the shrink wrap insulating covers around the lug-cable joint. There are a few cheap heat guns on Amazon, and my cheap one works ok. Sometimes the insulating shrink wrap comes with the lugs, but if not you'll need a decent range of sizes. 

(Although if you disconnect the battery and remove a couple of cables, you won't have any power to run the heat gun, so maybe also get some adhesive insulating tape you can wrap around the lug ends).

A cheap Amazon clamp-meter is great to let you know how much current (if any) is passing through your newly installed cables.

And the lug sizes are a pain. I've got a decent selection now, but you don't want the job to be held up for a day or two because you need to order more  lugs to fit a 35mm sq cable to an M8 post, and you've just used the last one- so its worth doing a full rundown of all the various lug sizes you think will be needed, and adding a few extra.

Sometimes you find odd ones- like I found that my BEP switch has 12mm posts, and 12mm lugs were not as quick or easy to order on Amazon as were the more common sizes like 35mm cable to M8 post. 

Also, a cheap cable-cutting tool can be found on Amazon that will do a tidy cutting job.

I did also buy one of those crimpers that seals a square ended lug around the end of a cable, for when you want to insert the cable into say, an MPPT. 

Another random one, but some P clips might be handy if you need to secure any loose cables onto a wooden wall. 

Its very contemporary for me, because I've got my BSS in December and I'm now trying to tidy up all the crazy cable runs, joints and uninsulated lugs that I hastily threw together when I first did the installation. 

 

 

[jonathanA]

4 hours ago, Tonka said:

Why would they want an aluminium built narrowboat built from Alclad

What ?

[Jen-in-Wellies]

11 hours ago, Tony1 said:

There is the slight hassle of stepping aside to find a place to put it whilst banging the hammer down on it, but I found it worked really well.

I appreciate that as a Morlock you probably prefer to involve a more violent tool like a hammer. But as a peace loving Eloi, I bought myself one of those cheap hydraulic crimpers for about £40,  and I'm not at all happy with the results.

In fairness, being an eloi means I'm probably not using it properly, but for me the hammer crimp made a really secure fixing of the lugs, and I've gone back to using it for my latest project of tidying up the cable runs in the electric cupboard. 

I have to go on to the bank to find a suitably heavy paving stone to use as a base anvil, before hitting the crimper. Doing it on board either absorbs much of the impact energy, or makes the whole boat ring like a bell, if using the base plate. You've got me. The cathartic violence is much of the point in buying one of these!

 

11 hours ago, Tony1 said:

Also OP, you'll need a small hot air gun thingy to apply the shrink wrap insulating covers around the lug-cable joint. There are a few cheap heat guns on Amazon, and my cheap one works ok. Sometimes the insulating shrink wrap comes with the lugs, but if not you'll need a decent range of sizes. 

A hair dryer doesn't really cut it for heat shrink on heavy cables and lugs. I have an old electric paint stripper, left over from my house owning days.

[Tonka]

10 hours ago, jonathanA said:

What ?

I thought you knew about the aerospace industry ? Clearly not

Alclad is what old aircraft are built with before the new composite ones. It is Aluminium Alloy clad with Aluminium.