Crunch time: Everything you wanted know about wires, contacts and crimping but were afraid to ask.

 sen-h

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So you know connectors right? There’s like prolly like a bunch of "generic" ones you see all the time. But do you ever wonder what they are actually called? Who makes the "official" ones? What crimp tools are you supposed to use (instead of the ones you bought of amazon for like $30)? How are you supposed to use them? And wire, what do all those numbers and colors mean? and what’s with those weird military connectors? And their corresponding weird tools? And actually, why do all the crimp tools look the same? Well, after falling down a rabbit hole far deeper than I am willing to admit I have answers. We’ll also cover some history, crimping theory (yes that is a real thing), Tips n’ Tricks and other random nonsense I learned along the way.

Sen Hastings is an FOSS and SBC enthusiast, Linux user and occasional Kicad user. Another lifetime ago he had a job working in aerospace where he learned a ton about connectors, wires, and application tooling (crimp tools), which was the inspiration for this talk.