Tiny brass crimps?

[Geo]

Need a source for a few tiny brass crimps for repairs to a kettle. The originals are about 4.5mm long and crushed down to about 2mm x

1mm. Used for connections from the element terminals to a resistor and neon lamp.

Background: This was a "Which Best Buy" kettle. The first failed in a week, leaking water from the bottom because base seal was not filtted properly. This was replaced by the retailer. The replacement lasted nearly two months before the flash/bang at switch-on. Turned out to be bad design or assembly, as the switch movement caused heatshrink insulation on the live lead to fray against a metal support. A glassfibre sleeve that possibly /should/ have protected it was not in the correct position. Or the metal support was positioned wrongly.

Pictures at:-

[Dave Plowman (News)]

See if any of the easily available pre-insulated types look about right. You can remove the insulation and are left with a bare brass crimp, which you could cut to length.

[dennis]

Take it back again, ASDA should check what's wrong and recall them if it a common problem or a poor design. If people don't take them back they will never know there is a problem.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not clear if this is the second kettle at 2 months old or a replacement for that. But if two examples had failed within a normal warranty period, I'd have got my money back and got a better one.

[tabbypurr]

I've used chocblocks, with plastic removed of course. The pictures tell me nothing.

NT

[mick]

I'd solder a new piece of wire and resistor in and heatshrink over the lot - and keep the fibreglass sleeve in the right place. I'm not over happy with the way that the bit of bare wire is being used as a support - I think I'd put heatshrink over the end of that too, to give less chance of the insulation wearing through again.

[newshound]

Agreed, kettle should be cool enough to use solder, but you do need to use crimps in electric irons. DAMHIK!

[jkn]

I'd buy a length of thin brass tube from eBay or a model shop (2mm ID?), cut a short length off it with stout wire cutters, and use that. If you are careful you can similarly crimp using the wire cutters, but don't quote me.

J^n

[Geo]

Thanks for the replies and ideas. I was worried about soldering as I thought there were crimps at the end of the wires right on the element connections. This was wrong - the wires were terminated in crimps as used in Molex KK sockets so I had some in stock already. The crimps either side of the resistor could probably have been soldered but I was reminded that there was a length of model-making brass tube "somewhere". Found, cut down and crimped with wire cutters.

The kettle(s) had already cost two round trips to Asda several miles away so case of diminishig returns...

[Andrew Gabriel]

You need high temperature nickel crimps for heating elements. I have used them for repairing toaster elements.

Spot welding would be even better, but I don't have one.