> Would anyone care to comment on and compare the tools offered by both > Paladin and RF Industries, as well as the link earlier in this thread? > Not cheap, but not the "several hundred dollars" either as quoted by > someone above.
OK, here's probably more than you ever wanted to know about crimp tools, crimp connectors, and how they work. First, there are two components to a crimp tool - the frame (the "handles", or "the crimper") and dies (the pieces with the appropriate-size holes of the appropriate size for the cable and connector you're crimping). There are some cheap crimp tools that don't use interchangable dies (for example, the kind of F connector crimp tool you might get at Radio Shack); I'm leaving those out as I'm guessing that's not what you're interested in. Crimp dies usually have two kinds of holes/shapes in them - one for crimping the ferrule (the tubular piece that goes over the shield) and one for crimping the center pin. Some dies, most often for those designed for small-diameter cables have multiple ferrule and pin crimp holes to handle a couple of different cable/connector types. For example, a particular crimp die might do Type N, BNC, and TNC on both RG58 and also RG59. The holes in the dies are most often hex shaped. This is almost always the case for the ferrule crimp, and most of the time for the pin crimp. Some pin crimps are round, oblong, or square, but they're more the exception than the norm. So when you hear someone say "hex crimp", they're talking about the shape that the crimp tool/die makes when it compresses the ferrule or center pin. The two most-common types of frames and dies are a) the Kings standard and b) the type used by Paladin, RFI, Ideal, Wireless Solutions (Tessco), Seargent, and others. The dies for the a) and b) types are not interchangable. For the most part, dies made by the companies listed in b) are interchangable among manufacturers (emphasis on "for the most part"). The Kings type crimp tools have dies which come together flush. The crimp tool compresses one die up against a fixed die along a straight-line path to make the crimp. The Paladin et al style has more of a scissors action where the two halves of the die come together at a bit of an angle rather than perfectly parallel. The Kings type arguably a better method, but as I'll get to, it's significantly more expensive. The Kings variety has dies which can be swapped in and out of the frame easily. The other varities usually require screws to be removed. The screws hold the die into the frame. On the nicer crimp tools, kurled thumbscrews are used, so it only takes a few seconds to swap dies. On others, you need to use a screwdriver to remove them. Fortunately, the screws are a standard size (10-32 if I remember right), so even if the tool you buy doesn't have thumbscrews you can get them from somewhere else (Paladin sells them, or you can get thumbscrews from McMaster-Carr or similiar places). The standard Kings frame is KTH-1000. The Daniels HX4 is basically a clone of the Kings KTH-5000. Kings, Daniels, et al make other models, but the KTH-5000 is the most common style. The KTH-1000 can be found here: http://www.kingselectronics.com/Portals/0/SalesPDF/KTH-1000_SD.pdf Figure you'll pay $300 for a KTH-1000 frame and $125 and up for each die. Among the b) types, you have lots of choices. My preferred frame is the Paladin "CrimpAll" 8000 which can be found here: http://www.paladintools.com/view_category.php?id=136 A Paladin 8000 should run about $50 for the frame and dies are about $20 or so. I like the CrimpAll because it has longer handles than many of the other styles of crimp frames, giving you more leverage for a tight crimp and less fatigue (important if you're doing many connectors, especially on larger cables). Paladin's earlier tool was the 1300 series, which is a good tool, but not quite as nice as the 8000. Dies are interchangable between the 1300 and 8000 (the 1600 series tool uses different dies, I'd avoid that one as there are fewer other brands that are compatible). At the risk of creating undue confusion, I should mention Kings also makes a crimp frame that's similar to the Paladin et al versions, and uses that style of dies, it's a KTH-5000. But when you talk about "Kings type" crimp tools, most people will assume you mean the KTH-1000 variety. The KTH-5000 was added to King's product line later to maintain some compatibility (if not competition) with the other manufacturers' offerings. The KTH-5000 is a lot like the Paladin 8000 discussed above. Likewise, RF Industries and others make Kings KTH-1000 clones. Like everything else in electronics, the nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from... I should mention that aside from crimping connectors on coax (hex crimps), you can also get dies to do "RJ" type connectors (RJ-11, RJ45, etc.), fiber optic connectors, wire terminals (spade lugs, ring lugs, butt splices), etc. So one frame can do many jobs if you have the dies to go with it. I'm purposely skipping powered crimp tools; I'm assuming you're mainly interested a tool that uses the Armstrong method. OK, that covers the basics as far as tools goes. Feel free to email direct if you want any additional info. Now, on to connectors. For coax connectors, usually installing the connector is a five-step process. Step 1, slide the ferrule over the end of the cable, letting it rest somewhere out of the way along the length of the cable while you perform the next three steps. Step 2, you strip ("prep") the end of the coax to the correct lengths. For most connectors (BNC, N, TNC, etc.) this is a "three-level" stripping process. The outer-most stripping level cuts off the jacket, braid, and dielectric, leaving only the center conductor. The next striping level further down the cable cuts off the jacket and braid, leaving the dielectric and center conductor. The last stripping level removes only the jacket. So you're left with three levels once you're done - the braid plus everything inside, the dielectric and center, and then the center only. There are tools to make this a single-step operation, but if you're doing it by hand with a utility knife, you do each level one at a time, being very careful not to knick the center conductor in the first level, not scoring the the dielectric too deeply in the second level, and not knicking the braid in the third level. The lengths/distances for each of the strip levels varies depending on manufacturer, connector type, etc. Step 3, once you have the cable prepped, you attach the center pin. Here's where you will likely get the most "less filling, tastes great" kind of arguments from others on the list, and maybe even manufacturers too. Personally, I always solder (not crimp) the center pin UNLESS the center conductor is stranded (RG400, RG58A/U, RG214, RG393, etc.), in which case I'll tolerate a crimped connection. If I'm really in a hurry, or if I'm somewhere that I just can't solder like up on a tower or rooftop with the wind blowing, I'll crimp on a stranded conductor, but never never ever on solid. If you crimp the center pin, only crimp it once -- resist the temptation to rotate the tool 1/3 turn and crimping again "for good measure" as it will only weaken/fracture the pin. If you solder, make sure no excess solder is on the outside of the pin - only allow solder to flow into the solder hole. If you get excess solder on the outside of the pin or around the edge of the solder hole, shave it off carefully with a utility knife. You'll want to use very thin solder so you can steer it into the hole without having it flow on the outside of the pin - 0.031" solder is sometimes even too big for small pins, 0.020" is better. Step 4, once the center pin is installed (whether soldered or crimped), slide the body of the connector over the end of the cable so that the center pin goes up into the connector. As you slide the connector on, the braid needs to be flared away from the dielectric slightly to keep it from getting trapped between the connector and the dielectric (the goal is to keep every strand outside of the body of the connector). I should mention that on many of the better brands of connectors, the center pin has a locking mechanism which serves several purposes including a) not letting you push the pin in "too far", b) holding the pin in place to prevent pull-out, and c) keeping the center pin centerd and axially-straight. If you're using connectors that have a locking center pin, you don't get a "second chance" to re-do your stripping, once it's inserted into the connector, it's in there for good. Step 5, with the connector fully seated on the end of the cable, slide the ferrule up over the braid, trapping the braid between the body of the connector and the inside of the ferrule, and then crimp the ferrule. The ferrule crimp is made with the crimp tool up against the rear of the body of the connector, leaving the trailing end of the ferrule un-crimped (i.e. the end of the ferrule that is away from the connector should be un-crimped to leave a bit of wiggle room for flexing the cable). Some people only do a two-level strip, skipping the middle level so that the braid is just as long as the dielectric. If you do this, what happens is that the braid is longer than it should be, so when you go to do step 5, you end up with excess braid sticking out that needs to be cut off with scissors or fine diagonal cutters before the ferrule can be slid up flush against the body of the connector. Real hacks just leave the braid sticking out, which, to me, is just one more potential source of noise. If you do the strip levels correctly, the braid should just about come up flush to the back end of the body of the connector. If you cut the braid too short, then you have less "grip area" between the ferrule and the connector body when you crimp it, increasing the chance of pull-out. There are some less-common connector types that don't require crimping on the center pin. Instead, the center pin is built into the body of the connector; it makes contact with the bare center conductor of the prepped cable using "fingers" on the inside of the pin (Times Microwave "EZ" series is one example of this type). This is similiar to how some of the newer types of Heliax connectors work (no soldering or threading in the center pin, just shove it into the connector and tighten). What I outlined above is the most common type of crimp connectors/cable prep you'll encounter; I'm just mentioning this other type in case you happen to come across it in manufacturer's literature. Connectors aren't all the same. I'm not going to get into which brands are better than others, but there are obvious and appreciable differences in quality between brands. What I'm really talking about is that the connectors themselves are physically different in terms of which crimp die you need to use. For example, a type N connector for RG400 from Kings may require a different crimp die than a type N connector for RG400 from Cambridge (just using that as an example, I don't remember if the Kings and Cambridge are really different off the top of my head). The most-common difference is how the center pin is made, which dictates what size die is needed. Some center pins are uniform in diameter until you get to the pointed "tip" of the pin. Others have a narrower area near the bottom of the pin where you crimp. Each manufacturer will specify the correct hex crimp size (usually specified in inches, and measured as the width of the "flats" of the six-sized hex crimp) for both the ferrule and center pin. Make sure you get the right die for the connectors you intend to use! I've mostly standardized on connectors from only a few manufactuers (mostly RF Industries, Huber+Suhner, Kings, and Delta, in that order of quantities used), so I've narrowed down the number of dies I might potentially need. OK, if you made it this far, hopefully I've managed to enlighten you more than confuse you. My bottom-line advice is to pick a good-quality tool, and then check for compatibility between dies and connectors. If you want a good middle-of-the-road tool as far as price goes but with good performance, I recommend the Paladin 8000. If cost isn't an issue, the Kings KTH-1000 is the way to go. And if you want to shop around, there are plenty of others to choose from. Tessco alone probably carries a dozen different times of frames and maybe close to a hundred dies, that's probably a good place to start... Hope this helped and not just confused things more. --- Jeff WN3A
