Spent $400 on a 'universal' wire crimper that ended up wrecking my connectors

I bought this fancy crimper online because the ad said it worked for every aviation connector type, but it mangled the pins on three D-sub connectors before I gave up. That was $400 down the drain and a whole afternoon wasted re-pinning everything by hand. Anyone know a solid crimper that's actually good for MIL-DTL-38999 series connectors?

3 comments

3 Comments

milar461mo agoMost Upvoted

Feel your pain, I once bought a "professional" one that turned every pin into a tiny modern art sculpture. I've had good luck with the old-school manual ratchet style for those 38999 connectors, the kind with the specific die sets.

lee7331mo ago

Ugh, those fancy crimpers are the worst for real work.

tessa39422d ago

Man, my buddy had this exact same headache last month. He bought one of those supposed high-end crimpers online, thought he was getting the real deal for some aviation connectors he was fixing up. First pin he tried? Totally mangled it, looked like a crushed soda can. He spent the next three hours on the phone with tech support trying to get a refund, and the whole time his project was just sitting there. Ended up just borrowing my old ratchet style one, got the job done in twenty minutes flat. It's like those fancy tools are designed to look good, not to actually do the work.