Metals used in crimp connectors, like copper, brass, aluminum, or bronze, are both ductile and malleable.

Squeeze PlayĬrimping takes advantage of the properties of metals to achieve electrically and mechanically sound connections. Using this crimping design, AMP sold a wide range of connectors that could be rapidly and repeatably applied to conductors, and that lent themselves to automated fabrication methods in a way that soldering would never be able to achieve. In the early 1950s, AMP Corporation came out with the first crimp connections for production use, the F-Crimp or open-barrel design. And soldering was basically the only show in town for the early days of the commercial electronics industry.īut soldered joints have their problems, both electromechanically and in terms of production – after all, an assembly worker can only sling solder around so fast. Something about the act of heating up a joint and flowing molten solder into it lends a feeling of permanence and quality to the finished product. We tend to think of soldered joints as the king of electrical connections. What could go wrong with a crimp to so subtly futz with a circuit that engineers were baffled? How is it that we can rely on such a simple technology to wire up so much of the modern world? What exactly is going on inside a crimped connection anyway? He sidled up to assess the situation and delivered his two-word diagnosis: “Bad crimp.” The dodgy connector was re-worked and the assembly passed, much to the chagrin of the guys in the short-sleeved shirts.Īside from the object lesson in experience sometimes trumping education, I always wondered about that “bad crimp” proclamation. He claimed that one assembly wasn’t passing QC and a bunch of the guys in ties couldn’t figure it out. He was a production floor guy who had a chip on his shoulder for the engineers with their fancy book-learnin’ who couldn’t figure out the simplest problems. I had a friend who was an electronics assembly tech for a big defense contractor.

Crimp wire splice