Crimping and arthritis

[rbowman]

Ooooh, those little male and female connectors doing their thing. Wiring and plumbing are the two areas where I usually wind up having some sort of sexual problem halfway through a project.

[Robert Green]

Be careful what you say to a crimpizoidal maniac. "You just watch yourself. I have the death sentence on twelve systems!" (-:

I think you need some neural crimping. Some of your axons have become disconnected from their associated neurons. A twenty minute session with a Dremel, a cut-off disk and my new crimpers ought to straighten out the bad connections. Let's set a time . . .

In the immortal words of Dr. Emilio Lizardo, "Laugh while you can, MB!"

Some day you'll discover a part of your body doesn't quite work the way it used to.

[Robert Green]

To me, crimping sounds less sexual and more scatological. You squeeze and squeeze and groan a little and finally a crimp spits out. (-:

In a follow-up to a follow-up, I discovered that the fully insulated connectors I often use:

don't crimp nearly as easily as the plain old "insulated" terminals that have insulation only around the base of the spade lug. The FI connectors take a LOT more force than the simple units, which are the ones I use the most, so it's no biggie. Besides, I can make the FI crimps on the benchtop, where I can lean down on the crimpers. That's harder to do inside a box, which is where the new ratchet crimpers excell.

The fully insulated quick disconnects when used with adhesive heat shrink tubing make for a pretty watertight seal without a lot of fuss. If I am really concerned about water getting in I encase the whole joint in adhesive-lined HST - I can always cut the outer layer away if I need to access the joint. I just bought a can of Liquid Electrical Tape based on a note I saw here. Interesting stuff and great for things that heat shrink tubing can't deal with. We'll see how it holds up compared to the ALHST. I am going to redo all of the wiring for the battery-powered backup sump this weekend.

FWIW, Dave Houston in computer.home.automation turned me on to Allelectronic where I've spent probably as much money as I have at Harbor Freight. HF has better prices but occasionally Allelectronics gets a huge lot of something like the Philips Stumble Lights that they price pretty low - far lower than I think they would have had they known how quickly they would sell out.

The sensor for my Floodstop is set up on fully insulated connectors with a spare already crimped up and ready to go. Same with the HomeVision temperature and humidity sensors. I can swap out a bad sensor in under a minute, even if I have to slice through a protective outer layer of HST. For stuff I connect and disconnect often in "drier" environments I use these instead:

They're not really waterproof but they come close enough and almost all of my battery analysis and maintenance gear is standardized on them.

I like the fully insulated disconnects for another reason: when using them with 12VDC equipment, I can always paint the negative ends black and the positive ends red. That's helped a lot in keeping the magic smoke inside things like trickle chargers. I did manage to repair one that had been hooked up backwards. Two voltage regulators blew for a total cost of fifty cents. Cracked the VR's right in half. Ever since then I have been obsessively marking polarity on everything battery-related with red and black nail polish.

[Stormin Mormon]

I got some red vinyl tape off Ebay and some yellow. Black electrical tape for pos, and red vinyl tape for neg.

[Pete C.]

The hydraulic crimpers Harbor Freight has for $50-75 depending on sales and coupons work very well. If I recall the die sets included go down to

12ga (yellow) size. The dies are very simple so you can easily make custom ones if needed (I did).

[rbowman]

I used to get the AllElectronics catalog but I haven't seen one in a while. Just as well. I'd thumb through it and start to thing "I wonder what I can do with that odd little gismo?" They'd come up with strange stuff every now and then.

[Robert Green]

Yes. They were good for the oddball part and electronic device. A lot of that stuff I can get for much less from Ebay's overseas vendors but at least once a year I stock up on Allelectronics goodies. They used to be a great source of neodymium magnets dirt cheap until China doubled the price for the rare earths they produce.

They sell a great self-fusing rubber tape I've not been able to find anywhere else, a really inexpensive grounded three-way adapter and some really useful coaxial power plug adapters that can convert the standard

2.1mm power plug to a number of other sizes. The really good buys often sell out *very* quickly. Some stuff, however, is dubious. I bought some high-temp red and black automobile "zip" wire that was defective. If you peeled it apart, the insulation would not strip smoothly and often it would peel away where you didn't want it to. The solution was to score it with a very sharp knife before splitting it. What a PITA.

[Robert Green]

Down to? I work with 18 gauge and some 16 gauge stuff for what I do. (-: While I love the idea of multiplying my weak hand force with hydraulic power, I think it's overkill. Still, I'll take a look at them. Thanks for the suggestion, Pete. I am going to HF tomorrow to get some sale items.

What I really want is the loader that Ripley used in Aliens. Can you imagine doing home demolition with one of those bad boys?