Wessex Technical Products Ltd

“The Power to Crimp” - An independent source for solid technical advice on all aspects of crimping and crimp connectors

Over the past few years there has been a growing problem of electrical failure in and around vehicles and other powered equipment. This has been exacerbated by the rising number of interconnections in vehicles and a rising number of outlets selling cheap poor quality products and a falling awareness in some quarters of what a good electrical connection actually is.

Why are good electrical connections so important?
Quite simply every year there are more and more connections being installed on new vehicles; with that the chance of an electrical failure taking you off the road and costing you money is rising exponentially at an alarming rate. Electrical vehicles and their charging points have very high power demands and thus demands for high quality crimp connections.

What is worse there is an increasing probability that the repair will be done with inferior parts and tools.

Part of the problem is that many Auto Electricians do not have quick and easy access to quality components. There has been a vast increase in the number of “cheap foreign imported connectors and tools” that are not up to the job. Yes they might look the part and work for a short while but they will probably fail again very shortly.

Many distributors are selling products that look right but are actually made with inferior materials often with less metal than is necessary to carry the current/voltage required by your systems. In addition the material is unable to hold the wires securely in place especially under prolonged vibration of a vehicle moving over roads and other surfaces.

The cause in general terms is that many distributors and resellers are only able to compete on price and do not have the right back up from manufacturers.

It is not necessarily their fault, for years the leading connector manufacturing companies and crimp tool manufacturers have made it hard for many distributors and resellers to get hold of quality products at a decent price and in a timely manner for the end-user to solve his problem of getting the vehicle back on the road and earning money. In the meantime cheap imports are easy to obtain and appear to offer good value. As customers we often vote with our pocket.
 
In addition a lot of the detailed knowledge of exactly what is a good crimp and how to assess it has been lost from the industry due to the manufacture of the connectors being moved off-shore, with the resultant loss of good local technical knowledge.

But; I hear you ask, what is the problem? I have connectors and crimp tool and the vehicle is back on the road.

Unfortunately the answer is not quite so simple. We all know that copper conducts electricity. Join a copper cable to a copper connector and hey presto it flows. But what we cannot see is the resistance of the joint or what is happening inside the connector during vibration.

Initially nothing will be noticed if a crimp tool has not exerted enough force to properly compact the wires into a single mass tightly held together by the walls of the connector; or if the walls of the connector are not thick enough to properly hold the wires correctly compacted.

If there are air gaps in and around some or all of each single strand of wire there will be “sparking” across the gap, corrosion will build and it will be harder for the electricity to flow. “The resistance has gone up”. Heat will build up and with it the probability of fire.

I hear you say now “my crimp tool is a ratchet tool I complete the cycle, I give the joint a pull with my hands the connector stays on; job done”

Sorry but I am afraid not necessarily. You are correct all ratcheted crimp tools will cycle over the ratchet but how do you know that sufficient force has been exerted at the die end of the tool to make a connection that meets the pull-off specifications and thus give you and your customer the knowledge that the repair will last? A quick tug on the connector is not a measure of pull off force, although I will concede that if it comes off you know it is a bad joint.

The easy way is to go to a highly reputable supplier who will give you warranted products. That means properly branded products from reputable sources. Look for terminals that have visible substance to them and preferably have a good brand logo.

Good quality Crimp tools are fairly easy to identify. Generally speaking if your tool says “Made In Sweden” or “Made in Germany” then you have a tool that will last a long time and can easily be maintained to ensure optimum crimping at all times. If it doesn’t have the “Made in Sweden or Germany” logo then with the exception of two US companies, the chances are very high that you have a low quality tool that is not doing the job at all.

The connectors are harder to identify, If they are made by connector manufacturers such as (in no particular order) TE, Molex, Harting, Elpress, JST and all the other leading connector manufacturers then there will be no problem. But the copies are much harder to spot.

Leading distributors such as RS, Klauke, Phoenix, Weidmuller all have gone to great lengths to ensure tools and terminals are matched. But even some of these companies sell cheap tools and terminals.

Just to add confusion, some (a very few) of the worlds “cheap sources” of tools and terminals can actually produce some reasonable quality products that can be crimped properly and can actually handle the power or data signal happily at least for a while.

Sadly it is not possible to use price as a distinguishing feature; not all poor quality tools or terminals are defined by price. Some companies are charging 10’s of £’s for a low quality tool, however if it is cheap then you will have problems fairly soon after purchase.

To be fair a cheap tool will usually work OK out of the box. How long that continues is not possible to say. At best it might be 5000 crimp cycles at worst less than 100 (note leading crimp tool manufacturers test other tool sources frequently and have these results). Nor is the result consistent from tool to tool from the same source.

So how can we help?
Here at WTP we aim to try to help and cut through the morass and give you products that you can stake our reputation on for we stake our reputation on our products. For 40 years Steve Wevill has been in and around the interconnection world; initially as a field technician in the RAF; using and abusing tools and terminals in a pretty tough environment with high performance demands. There followed time at leading connector manufacturers and finally working very closely, on behalf of the company that innovated the first scissors action crimp tool with world’s leading connector manufacturers.

This final role has enabled him to garner a unique knowledge that is now available to help you do the very best job you can for your customers.

WTP is here to offer both the best quality products and provide accurate advice on the right tool for the connector. Don’t just take my word for it. The tools are supplied with the full technical backing of Pressmaster and Wezag the two top crimp tool manufacturers in the world whose customer list is a who’s who of the world’s connector manufacturers; such as TE (AMP) Molex, JST, Delphi, Elpress, Amphenol plus many more. In addition the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers such as Mercedes, VW Audi, Volvo, BMW etc also have their tools specified in.

We can identify the tool specifically designed for the terminal and we can usually find an alternative that does a good crimp that meets the EN60352-2 pull off specifications but might not meet the connector companies’ specific crimp height/crimp width specs.

In addition to carrying extensive stocks of certain terminals we can usually source other connectors as required and will be constantly expanding the stock profile to encompass the needs you have.

We offer consultancy and a one stop shop for your connectors, tooling; a bespoke kitting service, providing a service kit specifically for your engineering and team needs. Our aim is to give you the peace of mind of knowing that you are doing a good job for your customers and service users.

WTP aims to offer solutions to interconnection problems in many environments but particularly in automotive, commercial vehicle; industrial vehicle and machine plus marine and many more.

Cool-Seal® is an in-line butt splice connector that offers a moisture resistant alternative to heat shrink connectors. Cut and strip the wire, insert into the connector and crimp, job done; Fitted in seconds without the need for a heat source.

Clear-Seal® is a full range of heat shrink connectors that offer a patented heat shrink that goes clear after shrinking allowing full inspection of the crimp joint underneath.

Eco-max® is a range of lugs and tube terminals designed specifically for the tough environment of commercial vehicles.

All these connectors have at the heart of them a 99.9% copper terminal, which is designed to carry the power appropriate to the wire size and to have a wall thickness that will stay in place after being crimped.

www.wtpltd.co.uk