Electric, Pneumatic or Hydraulic Lug Crimper

Try Burndy or Tyco for crimpers that would do what you want.

Depends so much on the quantity to be done.

In our production line we used electric/hydraulic crimpers. It was a self contained electric pump deal with a close/open valve.

However, I have seen manual hydraulic crimpers routinely used in the field for 4/0 and larger. Speed is not so critical when you are only doing half a dozen.

I have seen Greenlee crimpers used in the field. I think the main tool is about $2500 and dies in the $75 range. Try Amazon or E-Bay or the local pawn shop (stolen?).

(I just recently bought a special crimping tool for SCR leads connections. Tyco wanted about $2000. I got it on E-Bay for $180 used. It was in perfect working order!)

I use a harbor freight hydraulic crimpers up to 2/0 and I believe they have additional dies for larger gage wire. I have been using mine on heavy duty battery packs for golf carts and solar battery storage for our solar panels. As you need to keep good clean connections that means fresh terminals every now and then, when you catch corrosion.I believe I only spent around 85-95 dollars when I caught it on sale. I remember a friend told me he modified a set of the smaller dies to crimp larger cabling then the dies that come with it. Just a thought. Duke

Hi All, I am looking at Burndy, TE and Huskie. Huskie is winning$$ wise, weight 8.3 lbs, Burndy PATM6D-14 is looking good @ 7 Lbs, TE is in the running, waiting for a quote. Burndy and Huskie are around the same at $2100.00 Huskie is 8 Tons, Burndy is 6 Tons. I need this to be hand held as I am crimping inside the casting mounted to the motor and want tight wiring if anyone takes off the cover, wiring must be neat. Just can not get that with a hand manuel crimper where I have to set up 2 12" x 24" blocks to get the crimper inside then lean into it pushing and pulling with all my 150 lbs on the handle. The only issue I may have is none of the crimper's are UL, cUL or IEC rated. We seem to be shipping more products out of the country than domestically. Not sure if this is an issue yet. Jury is still out on this.

As I recall the lugs will be certified with a list of acceptable crimpers.

In the 80's the CEC changed introducing the issue of lug and crimp tool pairing. We had test sections for the lugs, cable, and crimp and that was deemed OK.

The problem was 4/0 TEW superflexible cable uses an over size lug and must be crimped tighter with an undersized die to achieve the required pullout and electrical crimp.

To be honest with you I do not have to use much more then two fingers on the harbor freight unit that I use. even on the largest connectors I do not have to really strain to crimp and for around 100.00 dollars I do not see any cost comparison to think about that is even close The unit I have I have used for two years and use it all the time at home and on the road for work on security control panels and battery back up systems for large scale security systems and access control systems. I normally do not buy harbor freight tools unless it is a one time use tool that I will only use once because I modified the tool to use it on an odd application. But I must say this tool surprised me with its reliability. Duke

For large cable size #6 AWG to 500 MCM we use T&B rechargable battery crimper.

TBM8 Dieless tool, it costs around 5K but it works great, no changing of dies needed.

I have made easy to use and very effective and inexpensive sets of crimpers from various sizes of bolt cutters. Some are so small as to be useable with one hand. They have remarkable leverage and can crimp nearly anything. The trick is to grind down the crimp surfaces until they just give the desired shape crimp when fully closed. -Illya