fake dupont/molex pins troubles

Status
Not open for further replies.

r00n

Member
Time zone appropriate Greets,

I purchased a Chinese blue handled crimping device and a set of DuPont Chinese copied pins from e-bay and although they work, after i disconnect the pin once if trouble shooting a circuit, it never goes back on tightly with a good contact. They are total rubbish really and have caused me hours of grief trying to track down where the circuit has come apart, only to come apart again and again. I had a look at mouser at a professional pin crimper and the price is ridiculous for even the serious hobbyist. Could you please recommend me a middle priced solution or indeed an improvement to this invention? What to use for pin connectors or otherwise?

Roon.
 
You might look at pololu, which has two crimpers:

I must admit to buying the crimper, but I don't tend to use it. I do find my hand crimped pins to be problematical, and I have been moving to use pololu's pre-crimped pins, possibly just cutting it in half to use the connector on one end and soldering the wire to the board on the other end:
 
I had all sorts of issues on various projects over the last year that were traced back to the DuPont crimps. My last few projects ended up being shipped to Antarctica for a couple of research teams so to ensure there were not any issues I revered to soldering all the DuPont connectors on the leads then crimping them. it takes a while but have not had one crimp fail on me since. This came about after struggling with one set of commercial crimp leads that did not have their wires stripped and the crimp was around the plastic so they made interment contact.

I also found that putting a really slight curve in the DuPont pin also helped keep the connectors on the pin, The curve was done using a set of pliers that were modified with a slight scallop in the lower jar and a radius in the top jaw. and when i say slight the curve ended up still looking straight but when you slide them on you can defiantly feel them make better contact.
 

These are not serious crimp tools, no wonder you found the crimps to be problematical. I'm afraid that there's no way around it, serious crimp tools cost serious money. I bit the bullet and got a TE Connectivity hand tool. This tool produces excellent crimps, contact and strain relief, that look really nice under a magnifying glass.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top