Been crimping D-Sub pins wrong for 5 years until a guy in Tucson showed me the trick

I always ran the wire through the back of the pin and crimped it flat, but that old timer at the Tucson hangar told me to crimp the insulation barrel first then the wire barrel, and now my pins don't pull out anymore - anyone else learn a basic skill backwards like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor.sean14d agoTop Commenter

wait are you saying you were skipping the crimp on the insulation jacket entirely or just doing it in the wrong order? cause i've seen dudes who treat d-subs like they're just squeezing the wire barrel and calling it good, always wondered how they didn't get intermittent shorts

bell.felix14d ago

@taylor.sean those dudes are basically building a time bomb. The insulation jacket crimp is what stops the wire from pulling out and keeps the signal from shorting against the shell. Skipping it might work for a few cycles but one good yank and you're chasing a ghost fault.

adam_patel13d ago

Man I've seen that exact thing on a job site like three years ago at a data center build out. This older tech would just crimp the wire barrel and leave the insulation jacket floating, and I watched him do it to like forty pins before anyone caught him. The worst part was he argued it was fine because the wire didn't pull out immediately when he tugged it. But anyone who's dealt with a loose pin in a D-sub knows that first thermal cycle or vibration from a fan is all it takes to make that thing start rubbing against the shell. I ended up having to redo a whole harness because one of his connections started shorting against the hood after a week in service. It's one of those things where you don't notice until it's causing a problem that's nearly impossible to trace.