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Bought a cheap coax stripper online and it cost me a whole morning
I grabbed one of those $15 strippers from a random site last month thinking it was a good deal. The blade was dull right out of the box and it kept nicking the center conductor, causing signal issues on every other fitting. I had to redo three jobs from that day, which set me back about four hours of work. In my experience, that little tool probably cost me over $200 in lost time. Has anyone found a brand that actually holds up without breaking the bank?
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willow_ellis6mo ago
Ugh, that's the worst. I had a similar thing happen with a cheap crimper for RJ45 connectors. The jaws were so out of alignment it crushed the plastic tab every single time. I went through a whole bag of connectors before I gave up and just drove to the hardware store.
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hayden5875mo ago
My old boss showed me to put a tiny drop of super glue on the plastic tab before crimping. It sounds crazy but it actually works with those cheap tools, stops the tab from cracking. I keep a bottle in my kit now just for that.
4
gavin_kim36mo ago
Yeah, that plastic tab is the worst part to mess up. What I do now is always test the crimper on a single connector with a scrap piece of cable first, before I even touch the real run. If it crushes it, you know right away the tool is junk and you saved the rest of your connectors. A lot of those cheap ones just can't keep the dies parallel.
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