There are many manufacturers of crimp compression terminals from all over the world. Each will manufacture their lugs to different dimensions, using a variety of material standards. As the dimensions of the tube can vary greatly between manufacturers for the same cable size, how do you know the compression crimp made is safe and secure?
Quite often contractors and installers will see the cable lug as a small unimportant part of the entire build, with little time spent considering the consequences. If this component part is not correctly specified and installed using the correct tools, the cost to rectify the equipment or send engineers to site will far exceed the cost of using a correct crimping ‘system’ in the first place.
More often today, the crimp style made to install cable lugs is hexagonal (rather than indent). This means that when the jaws of the crimping tool have met, there is no further compression of the cable lug. So the correct selection of cable lug is very important to match the crimping tool in use and guarantee the connection made is safe & secure.
The only way to ensure a safe termination is to use a matched system where the same manufacturer’s products are used throughout the connection; cable lug + die set + crimping tool. This is the recommendation throughout the world which will give you peace of mind that the connections made will be safe for years to come.
Manufacturers like the German tool specialist Klauke produce all the components required for a system and are in full control of dimensions, tolerances, material spec, and after sales service. Pure electrolytic copper traceable back to the mill is used to produce low resistance joints, which is annealed after manufacture to ensure it is compressed evenly and easily onto the cable strands; optimising the electrical properties and reducing wear on the compression tool.
In recent years top class manufacturers have included features in their crimping tools which enables the user to be sure the full compression has been achieved, and then download & print quality certificates from the tool to certify the installation to clients.
Productivity improvements have been made through designing smaller lightweight tools which can be used in confined areas to make crimping an easier task than was the case in past years. Many crimping tools have become battery operated, meaning the installation process can be achieved at the push of a button, with the force generated through compact hydraulic pumps built into the power driven tools.
Battery operation has meant crimp connections can be achieved from 0.1mm2 up to 1000mm2 by a single person; many crimping operations in the past at larger cable sizes would have required 2 people. As the manual input to the crimping process is greatly reduced, the installer can take more care about positioning, reducing errors, and speeding up their operations.
Below you can download a Free Klauke Correct Crimping Technical document, which answers many crimping related questions, including -