Author Topic: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?  (Read 906 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

coppercone2

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 6546
• Country:
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2022, 05:31:59 pm »
I got burndy lugs, which look pretty heavy duty, and the crimper does not do shit to them with 6AWG setting using 8AWG lugs like on the face plate.

I assume they either go bullshit from china or have some unobtanium lug. Basically if it does not say it on the die its not gonna work, the little lookup table saying you can do 8AWG with this is bullshit. I don't trust the face plate at all.

Does anyone know whats going on here ?

Ian.M

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 11537
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2022, 05:53:35 pm »
You need enough copper in the lug walls and cable to totally fill the area of the closed crimping dies with a percent or two excess so it forms a gas-tight crimp.

Measure the die area - that one looks simple enough to measure directly, but for more complex dies, I would suggest crimping on Plasticine, shaving it flush either side, and weighing it to calculate the volume given the density (use Archimedes method on the rest of the pack).  Once you've got the volume, divide by the jaw width to get the area.   Given a sensitive enough balance it will be reasonably accurate.  For small dies, crimp ten lumps of Plasticine as above and weigh them together for an order of magnitude better accuracy, or maybe switch to crimping soft Lead.  If the die has two profiles laterally for an insulation crimp, carefully cut the plasticine at the boundary line and only measure the width of the contact crimp side of the die.

coppercone2

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 6546
• Country:
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2022, 12:40:12 am »
Where does this cable fit in?
https://www.amazon.com/BNTECHGO-Silicone-Flexible-Insulation-Stranded/dp/B08XTRHBGJ

Because when i do the same crimps on that wire with the 8AWG detent crimper die that I have on a ratcheting crimper, it detents thick and the cable seems to hold well. Its just these square dies that have a problem.

I got the tool because I thought a square crimp on a 8AWG wire would be better.. I have no use for 6+awg wires right now. In a week or two I should know if the thick-construction lugs from Burndy work on the square crimp with the 8AWG wire.

Maybe Burndy 'heavy wall' is actually standard wall and their standard is extra thin? Or does that wire fall into 'difficult to crimp' territory?
« Last Edit: May 22, 2022, 12:47:36 am by coppercone2 »

Ian.M

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 11537
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #6 on: May 22, 2022, 05:42:44 am »
Yes, that's rope lay construction - twisted bundles of twisted strands.   Its also 'Chinesium' so there's a risk there's less copper there than claimed.  The easiest way of checking would be to cut an accurately measured length, strip it and weigh the copper.

Its a bodge, but you could try unlaying the strands and bunching them in a single bundle, consolidating it by applying a tight whipping of fine bare tinned copper wire, working from the end of the insulation towards the tip, which will reduce voids and add additional copper in the crimp.  Otherwise try packing the crimp by inserting offcuts of single strand copper wire, before crimping, after the cable has been inserted in the crimp barrel.

coppercone2

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 6546
• Country:
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2022, 08:05:19 am »
I have no idea, I thought sargent would be good for lugs.

Kjelt

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 6342
• Country:
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #11 on: May 22, 2022, 08:21:15 am »
I find it very suspicious that you have to use a AWG4 die for an AWG8 cable and lug.
For me all alarm bells go off. I would get my mony back and buy a decent hydraulic crimptool second hand on ebay or try some third party hydraulic crimpers if you do not have to crimp dayly (hobby use)

Ian.M

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 11537
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #12 on: May 22, 2022, 08:28:13 am »
Crimp connectors and tooling are the wild wild west of electronics assembly.

Ever if you stick to genuine 1st world brands, public specs for the crimp dies are extremely rare, and it generally comes down to manufacturer X stating that the only approved tooling for their product range N is manufacturer Y's model numbers A, B or C  crimp tool/die.   Also, manufacturer Y usually doesn't offer a compatibility table for which manufacturers specific products crimp in a model A tool/die, so after investing $$ for the tool you are locked in to manufacturer X, unless you stumble across another manufacturer recommending the same tooling.   Maybe things are better if you are buying 1000,000 units of the crimps, and they'll actually let you have the die specs, but that's not something I've ever been involved with.   Frankly it all smells like an organized crime family to me!

If you are using tooling approved by the crimp terminal manufacturer with a (real) cable CSA within the specified range for that crimp terminal, and the terminal is specified for the metal of the cable, it should 'just work'.  If anything's not as specified it probably wont.   The only factor that's easy for you to control is the amount of copper CSA in the cable, as you can experiment by stripping or adding strands till you find the limits for a particular terminal and tooling, then buy cable with a CSA that's comfortably within the limits.  However some crimp tools/dies will *NEVER* make an acceptable crimp on a particular terminal as they don't match the terminal well enough, and either squish it too much or not enough.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2022, 08:30:56 am by Ian.M »

coppercone2

• Super Contributor
• Posts: 6546
• Country:
• \$
Re: what the fuc are "heavy duty" and "standard" wall thickness lugs?
« Reply #13 on: May 22, 2022, 05:16:03 pm »
To me it makes sense to swap dies since the thing runs on total mass of copper and the wall thicknesses are different, so you have a different amount of copper in the lug, so not sure how much difference there is between making the wire thinner and the crimp thicker or vise versa, since they want a uniform pressure material... so it did not set off alarm bells
now that I think about it a long time ago I think I did look into strand count of wires and the chinese ones had less then digikey but I forgot about that research.. years ago..

i gotta count this crap

Smf
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 2, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.23370739817619324, "perplexity": 6832.095868466638}, "config": {"markdown_headings": false, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335190.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928082743-20220928112743-00415.warc.gz"}