Preciva Dupont Crimping Tool AWG26-18, Ratchet Crimper Toolkit with 1550PCS Male/Female Pin Connectors 0.1-1.0mm² and 460PCS JST Terminals for 2.54mm 3.96mm, etc.

Preciva Crimping Tool Kit with all needed materials. The tool, JST-XH Connectors and Dupont Connectors. Within a few days after ordering with Amazon UK I received this very complete set in France. The box it came in was well packaged with enough extra paper to make sure the kit itself was undamaged after the journey overseas. In the sturdy cardboard box we find the Crimping Tool, a very complete and helpful User Manual describing the ins and outs of this set in great detail and in 6 languages. It also comes with a lot of materials to crimp. Two boxes for transport safety packaged in a strong sleeve. One of the 2 plastic organising boxes (the bigger of the 2), contains 1550 Dupont Connector parts. They range from the smallest 1 pin plastic holders to the 6-pin wide plugs. With the small metal pieces for male and female connectors this makes up for a complete crimping solution. But there is even a lot more in this box as well. There are the elbow connectors (they will take a Dupont plug) that can be soldered to your pcb or experiment board. As well as a 150 cm 10-wire ribbon cable to build your first sets of cables with plugs from. The smaller of the two plastic organising boxes contains the 460 pieces for the JST-XH Connectors. This is a system where the male part is soldered to your board and the cable is crimped to the plugs. It delivers plugs/connector combinations from 2 up to and including 6 plugs. The box itself is of a different make compared to the bigger box and might be a little less sturdy. So far it works very well for me. After these preliminaries lets see how the crimping works. The crimping equipment is very sturdy with a good grip. It has a ratchet that blocks the tool in a few steps which turns out to be a real help when crimping. After reading the manual that is very detailed and easy to understand I made my first set of cables with plugs. The way to do this turns out to be very easy if you set the tool with 2 clicks from the wide-open setting. Then you can feed the small metal pin in one of the three openings (see the manual). The numbers 1-3 should be turned towards you (visible) when you feed the pins into the beak. Then you need to visually check how far to feed the cable into it and finalize the crimping movement slowly but surely. At the end of this movement the tool can again be opened and you should have a well crimped connection. All in all I am very pleased with this new addition to my electronics workshop. I have used it in a variety of projects connecting separate electronics circuits on pcb's to each other and for making connections to various sensors and other modules like GPS or break-out boards. The pitch is 2,54 mm which is the standard for most of the experiment boards and solderless breadboards (see pictures). It gives you more than enough parts for many years of DIY-electronics projects. And the tool itself will outlive you if handled with care. I can heartily recommend this Crimping Tooling! PS. pictures of pcb and solderless breadboard showing some usage scenarios, these are not included!

I have used a wide variety of crimps and crimp tooling over the years from ultra-cheap pressed steel junk to industrial tooling costing hundreds of pounds. I have wanted something to manage this sort of crimp system for a while but I hadn't seen anything I could afford. When I saw these and that they came with terminals my expectations were pretty low to be frank but I have been surprised by just how good they have turned out to be. The quality of the frame is high, with well formed and aligned steel pressings that appear to be properly riveted together. The hand grips are comfortable and well attached to the frame. The all important jaws set is well machined, seems to be properly hardened and meshes very well without any obvious lateral play or interference. The crimping action itself is smooth and positive without frame deflection, though you wouldn't really expect any with crimps this small. My only niggle is the practical difficulty with setting up and aligning the crimps themselves while ensuring correct placement of the wires. This is not really the fault of the tool but the consequence of having to hand crimp such small parts. The resulting crimps are perfectly formed and secure. I have tried a couple of manual pull tests and the crimps seems as well formed as any I have done on manufacturer supplied professional equipment. I haven't tried all the connector permutations but the first lot are going onto an Arduino Proto board so that should show up any quality issues with the actual terminals themselves but so far I am delighted with the tool. This looks to be a positive addition to my toolbox and represents almost unbelievable value for money.

Tons of connectors, absolutely great value for the price. Crimpers feel well-built and fairly sturdy. The two major negatives are the instructions and the gigantic hard to remove sticker that takes up the entire front of the box. The instructions don't explain a thing, I am new to using this tool for this operation. There's tons of youtube tutorials however, so easy to get to grips with after a while. Definitely a knack though. The sticker has to be the hardest sticker to remove I have ever encountered and it takes up the entire front of the box, not the smaller sticker pictured. I tried acetone, isopropyl alcohol, vinegar, and finally oil before the oil and lots of scraping with a card finally removed it. My chemical engineer partner tells me that means the glue is latex-based. Just dropping this here so anyone else who tries to remove the sticker knows without to much exploring: use oil and spend 10 minutes scraping. Good value otherwise.

Ok so quick disclaimer, I am the kind of person who gets excited about being able to crimp my own wires. A lot of the work I do in IT invariably leads me to crimping my own network cables, which I find unendingly dull, nevertheless I understand the importance of a nice tidy install to finish off my hobby / electronics projects around the home. Dupont crimping, on the other hand, I find enjoyable, mainly because I know the end result is something that I will see and it will benefit me in my home and hobby life. How depressed was I, then, to receive my previous Dupont crimper about 2 years ago which from start to finish was a complete disaster. I researched for ages the exact type of crimping tool that I would need, but despite this, I couldn't get a single connector to crimp properly. I had watched a couple of youtube videos which seemed to make it clear, but my results yielded nothing. Anyway onto this product, which is what you want to hear about! As you may guess from the lead-up to my actual review, this crimper worked for me first time, straight out of the box. I crimped two beautiful connections onto some 1mm cross sectional area cable (twin & earth - no, I won't be running mains through a Dupont connector, this was just a test!) This is the thickest cable that the product says it will crimp. Worked first time, and pretty nice job. I am not known for amazingly tidy crimping but the instructions are perfect, they make it very clear how to get a good crimp first time. As you can see from my photo, the instructions show you how to do it, and how NOT to do it. Honestly I think the instructions that go with the crimper are half the battle to getting a good crimp. e.g. I didn't know you have to hang the connector out of the crimping tool over half way, lining the wings up with the step change in the upper crimp jaw. None of the Youtube vids I saw mentioned that, or maybe it's specific to this tool. As the instructions say, the wire insulation should not reach the second crimp wing (shown on drawing). The instructions say you must strip 2.5mm of insulation off. Way less than I was doing before. I did a really hard pull test and the connector is definitely not going anywhere. Very strong connection. I'm actually really excited, sad as that sounds. I have a little tip, which seems to make crimping easier. You can actually wedge the connector into the crimping tool and it holds nice and firmly while you get the wire into the right position, if you squeeze the handle until you hear the first ratchet click. One problem I had with my old crimper (and I don't think I managed a single good crimp from it) was that you could not do this, and by the time you lined up the wire, the connector had fallen out the back of the tool. It was almost impossible. Not so with this tool. Works a treat. See my little Amazon review video for a demonstration of this. So this set cost almost as much as my lovely new TS100 soldering iron delivered direct from another (non-Western) website you will have heard of, and no doubt you can get a decent crimper for less money on such a website... but for me, it was 30 quid well spent as I'm delighted I can now crimp dupont - and JST connectors successfully. Win!

As a relative novice to the world of crimping, I'm very happy with them. I'm not sure any of this type of crimper can be regarded as "easy to use", they all need practice, but these are as easy as any I've tried. JST (position 1) is the easier of the two types, as they have a little nub which sits just outside the jaw, which helps to position the crimp correctly, and the crimp is held nice and stable by the first click of the ratchet; you then simply put the wire in by the right amount (that takes some experimentation) and close it all the way. You can feel the extra resistance if you've pushed the wire in too far and the part of the crimp that should be bare wire has instead bitten down on insulation, which can alert you to a miscrimp that you might otherwise not be able to see. The DuPont (position 3) on the other hand you have to align by eye, and I find it more difficult to keep it in the right place; the crimp seems to need a little squeeze of its horns before insertion otherwise it's prone to tip sideways as you close the jaws, and there isn't a ratchet click that holds it securely while still permitting the insulation to slide into the outer part of the crimp, or in any case not with the wires I was using. But at least that 3rd die position is the right shape for the Dupont, unlike many crimpers which claim to support Dupont but don't actually have the correct shape for the insulation crimp. The supplied crimps/plugs/sockets themselves seem of adequate quality, and it's nice to get everything in one package - a good set for beginners like me.

Preciva have hit the nail on the head with this kit. I've purchased a few tools from them now and this kit doesn't disappoint. The crimping tool is the headliner here, it continues the line of Preciva's excellent value tools. Very ergonomic with extremely comfortable grips on the handles, well moulded and bright, making them easy to spot in a pile of tools. The crimp dies are accurate and produce a good, consistent crimp and the ratchet mechanism on this tool is as good as some of the pro tools I've used, which are priced many times great than this. The ratchet steps are spot on, allowing me to advance the jaws to hold the crimp while positioning the cable accurately. The release lever as shown in one of my photos is also well positioned and easy to release. It only springs out once the jaws have closed to the first position and releases by pushing up toward the jaws, so it's out of the way when the jaws are open and very easy to use when you need to release the ratchet. The tool also comes with two boxes of connectors. There is a good supply of Dupont connectors and also 2.54 pitch header connectors too. Finally in the box, there is a small instruction leaflet. It is very clear and easy to follow if you have little or no experience with these connectors. If you are into small electronic projects and Arduino projects, this sort of kit is pretty essential for making flexible and reusable connections. I definitely recommend this kit in particular.

The tool has correctly a shaped jaw for the round dupont terminals's insulation clamp, and 2 sizes of jaw for other types. The supplied dupont terminals are better quality than the ones I have bought separately in the past. I have never used JST terminals before and wanted to try them, so this was a good include for me. They fit the end position. The ribbon cable in the kit has very fine non-plated conductors. I don't know the gauge. Something around 0.1mm^2 I think. It's actually described as IDC cable in the product description, which would appear correct. I was able to strip the ends for my test crimps using my thumbnail. Test crimps on the supplied cable with a pair of each type of terminal very satisfactory, was able to get correct position with no problem, worked correctly first time. Absolutely no messing about, no adjusting post-crimp, no having to straighten the terminal. Fantastic. The tool is more expensive than similar looking tools you can buy elsewhere, but definitely worth it for the peace of mind knowing you're getting something that works, and the value-add of the included terminals and cable is reasonably good. I wouldn't go so far as to say the produced crimps are 100% as they do have flaws. You only get 100% with a professional tool costing 100's of pounds and it is not a fair comparison. As an amateur tool however, it is excellent.

Out of the cheap crimpers and packages sold for Dupont-type connectors, this seems to be the most effective: notice the ROUND jaw for the insulation wrap, which all of the rivals I've seen certainly lack. However, the included connector contacts are of low quality, and will be distorted on crimping, with the conductor wrap ending up uneven. Interestingly, this tool performs much better with genuine Molex C-Grid III (phosphor bronze) female contacts on 22 AWG wire. For purposes of making up quick leads for Raspberry Pi, Arduino etc., this will do the job. Nevertheless, there is a difference between connectors that just suffice, and those built for long-term reliability with gas-tight crimping. If this is your intention, the choice is essentially between spending a few hundred pounds on the proprietary crimpers, and sticking to factory-made (machine-crimped) cables. I didn't try the male Dupont connectors (although I believe that these are meant to be applied with a different tool entirely), or the JST terminals, as I decided to return the item, rather than spend time producing work of questionable reliability.