Molex 63811-1000 Application Tooling Hand Crimp Tool For Mini-Fit Jr.

No complaints so far.

Have you tried one of those ratcheting type crimps on JST or similar connectors and always been frustrated that it either doesn't crimp hard enough or it crimps so tight it pinches the wire off? Been there. Got tired of that. Bought this. Works perfectly. First try, and have yet to make a bad crimp with this thing. Unbelievable the difference in crimp quality between this and the cheapo knockoff ratcheting types.

I was doing some recabling for a tiny computer case and got one of the ratcheting multi-step ones you can find pretty easily, it worked but it sort of mangled the connections a lot of the time which made it hard to get consistent cable lengths (a lot of retrimming and stripping required). This makes absolutely beautiful crimps on the wire itself, but it seems like the insulation crimp sizes aren't super well matched to the wire gauges possible with the tool. It can go down to 24 awg wire, but the smallest insulation size is pretty big even for something thicker like 18 awg. You can get away with using the wire side for insulation crimps but it won't be pretty. Regardless, much cleaner results overall. Definitely will keep it in the toolbox for other computer work (and maybe automotive?) in the future.

For Molex mini-fit pins this tool does the job. Because of the small size of the crimp area of the pins, the tool needs to be thinner than most all of the other crimp tools available. Otherwise the insulation crimp gets mangled when you crimp the wires, or vice versa. Expensive.... But it does the job nicely.

While this crimper is more expensive than some similar-looking, non-ratchet crimpers, it does a superior job on both Molex and D-connector terminals. To properly crimp certain terminals, one needs to separately crimp the portion that grips the wire and the portion that grips the insulation. This tool makes it possible to do this, although two crimps are required. In my experience, the ratchet style crimpers tend to not perform the two different crimps properly and/or tend to bend the terminal. Unless you are doing production work and need a high-end, high-volume tool, this crimper is an excellent choice. Your patience will be rewarded with excellent crimps.