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Used to hand-solder all my connector pins until I got a crimp tool last spring
Now I can finish a 37-pin D-sub in under 10 minutes instead of burning my fingers for an hour, but has anyone else had issues with the cheap die sets losing alignment after like 50 crimps?
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black.jake10d ago
Burning my fingers for an hour" really hits home, I guess that's the downside of upgrading from the caveman method. My cheap die set started giving me loose pins around the 40 crimp mark, so your experience lines up with mine. Take this with a grain of salt, but I just bought a spare set and swap them out when things start feeling sloppy.
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emery_white10d ago
Swapping die sets as a fix is fine until you realize the frame itself wears out too. Those cheap crimpers have aluminum frames that get sloppy after a hundred cycles, not just the dies. I had a set that started crushing pins sideways because the frame flexed. Better to spend once on a ratcheting tool from a real brand like IWISS or Engineer. Your swap trick works, but it's just putting off the inevitable frame failure.
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