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Spent 2 years crimping cannon plugs with the wrong tool before a senior guy called me out
I was using standard crimpers on some D-sub pins for a nav system swap on a King Air 350. The pins felt tight but the senior tech walked over and just looked at my work for like 10 seconds. He pointed out the insulation was slightly pinched near the barrel and said that causes intermittent failures after 500 hours of vibration. Turns out I needed a M22520/1-01 die set the whole time which I didnt even know existed. I had done maybe 50 installs that way without a single complaint. Anyone else have a basic skill they thought was fine but turned out to be completely backwards?
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jordanblack12d ago
Those 50 installs with no complaints kind of make me wonder how "intermittent" these failures really are though.
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ray13612d ago
Wait, did you ever get a chance to check the actual pull test on those crimps? I had a similar thing on a CH-47 with battery terminals. I was using these big fat hand crimpers till a buddy showed me the right hex dies for a military spec tool. The difference was night and day. The insulation bite was clean and the wire crimp felt solid, no nicks or squished bits. That old M22520 set is worth tracking down, even if you have to buy it off a surplus auction.
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