today we're gonna look at ferrule crimp tools from wIha and
this new version we do love a ferrule at eFIXX
takes us back to one of the first video series we produced on ferrules where we went into everything
from the various color code systems to the types and where and the advantages of using them so i
will leave a link above my head somewhere and in the description below where you can check out that
series if you're new to the world of ferrules but for the seasoned expert gary what didn't we look
at in that series we never took a look at the tools in any great depth and that's what we're
going to do today we're going to talk about the heads and we're also going to talk about this
new one that's not just got a lovely looking head it can rotate 360 degrees to make yourself life
easier when you're in those panels and that's what we've been doing behind us and we've been a panel
wiring so it brought together this video yeah and as we go through we'll try and dispel some of the
myths that popped up in the other series so people ask us lots of questions and perhaps start with
the first one is why would you invest in should we say a well-engineered german tool right as opposed
to one that you might get from a well-known online retailer that does next day delivery
for free well let's take a closer look because i think you'll see quite quickly about the uh online
retailer and the quality you get with that one so just give us a little pizza cutter style so
imagine we're just going to slice open a pizza there um so very similar looking uh mechanically
uh this one does a square crimp this is a hexagonal crimp we'll come on to that in a bit but
when you talk about build quality it sounds like a castanet yeah why this one is rock solid don't
like anything and then it's just that but the look and feel and a lot of people say when it comes to
tools what do you normally get you get what you pay for gordon yeah and so is that enough to
tip you in the direction of going for a quality tool i guess it depends it depends if you're a if
you're an occasional crimper and how much ferrule work you do but if you're going to be doing a
lot of work in panels a lot of work repetitive work with flexible cable um we think obviously
investment in a tool like this is obviously worth it yeah and if it's on your wrists and
if you are an occasional crimper let's display that myth you can't crimp solid conductors class one
and put a ferrule on it that's a big no isn't it yeah that's it yeah so these are suitable for
uh class five classics there's a bit of a debate on the class two we're not covering that in
this video we might have to go back in there and explore that one but yeah mainly flexible cables
and a lot of the case you've cut the end off a prepared cable and you need to put a fair along
because you want to shorten it well talking about that let's make a feral off then so
let's uh let's get in and have a look okay so we'll just demonstrate the difference in these two
units here so i'll start i've got a six millimeter one here okay and that's got a black sleeve
identifying there is three systems isn't there for identifying the colors from these two german and
one french yes there are two general one french and where in the uh currently in the video system
okay is that exclusively that's all we've got off we've got a mixed resistance we've got a
mixture that will come on too people will suddenly start seeing some yellow coming so put that in
uh and here we go and that's effectively the pizza cutter isn't it here we see the
pizza conversion and that is a hexagonal crimp as you can see that in the end there
uh which i tend to favor if you were working here with round uh terminals okay yep so screwing
round terminals going with that one yeah and now here's the same with the new version from we have
which is uh it's even got a partner oh you love a partner give us that five four five two two three
okay it's easy for you to remember so if you can come up with a name nickname for it uh obviously
it's not a pizza cutter then fire that in and then we'll see we've got a square crimper there
so you can see the difference yeah between them so yeah that's a square one and also
we said the head would rotate you just show me that head rotating for me please yeah so i'll
just not prepare anything and the advantage of that is obviously when you're working in
panels etc you can't always get it in going in a certain direction when you've got obviously
the original one we looked at so this gives you a lot more flexibility doesn't it yeah so imagine
you've you've come out some slotted trunking and you're going at the top of the contact or a switch
it's desirable does that just rotate without no there's no it just clicks around clicks around
that's 360 degrees and we go yeah down there we'll just go ahead and front ended that one yeah
now another another debate there that we have for people you'll see there was a tiny bit of
a tiny bit of copper sticking out at the end and when we looked into it you have to leave
a tiny bit of copper and and it says a gentle twist okay the other people say you never twist
no and then people over twist okay so yeah so don't yeah don't twist uh yeah don't don't
twist because actually what you do is start increasing the diameter of the conductor um
yeah the suggestion is and this is what we've you may have a different opinion leave it below
a light twist to restore the uh twist that would be in the in the conductor when they made it
and a couple of mil overhanging one so maybe to come through between point one and one millimeter
depending upon the size of the conductor now that was advice from one manufacturer's white
paper we'll put that in the description below as well if you want to read more on that because it
saves us keep answering that in the comments okay what sizes can we go up to with these two
crimping tools from wikipedia um so they're both the same so they'll both go up to 16 millimeter
single conductors or they will handle up to a two by ten uh twin ferrule so let's just have a look
here's where your contrasting color chords come in so when it comes to twin ferrules
the plastic bit is normally the same um so this is a twin template you're not going to say it that's
yellow we used black before yeah because suddenly we're straight into the din system okay and that's
purely because uh they weren't in stock in the other one on the uh so a little bit of a general
twist here in order to get them in yeah a little bit on these and then we just slide that down
as we go so that's yeah what's going on it's a little bit more tricky obviously
with the double ones and you want to get them in perfectly two by six you can see we're just
poking at the end a little bit yep and again i'm going on the side it's interesting here i
want to try and align the um it's going to create a square profile i want to try and
make the square with that flat that makes sense especially if it's going into a cage clamp yeah
so just put that in there and obviously it's a bigger conductor a little bit more force
and there's our twin ferrule that's nice and again the old tug test that isn't coming off and that's
what you find when you're doing it on class two conductors say if this was a 10 mil steel
or armored and you were feral in the end it does slide off doesn't it yeah i'd say you might be
okay on smaller conductors because you get larger the actual diameter change if you haven't seen the
video we made about conductor classes oh yeah uh a new conductor classes we're not when i've talked
about music it is the makeup of the different types of conductors so a class one being a solid
conductor all the way up to a class six which i've actually got here as well we can use that
to demonstrate the uh top end um feral crimping on this okay so that is at 16 mil then is it
yeah this is a 60 ml this is a classic so it's got masses all right so there's lots and lots of
conductors in there so really fine stranded yep super fine straight i would check out that video
because gary actually counts how many uh strands are in there notes when you said singing yeah i
did have a song in there didn't i just pull that in and the game was probably gone a little bit
too long on the copper before anyone says i might just have to trim that you can see that's a nice
uh that's really you'll notice there's no plastic end on this this is an uninsulated ferrule
but yeah that's a neat a neat tool a few other things to mention on this if you
make a mistake we all make mistakes from time to time again sometimes if you've got this mechanism
uh trapped right okay there is an easy release mechanism we've done that a lot of times and when
you when you're doing things like ring crimps and that and you get it to a point you can't do it so
you're telling me there's a way to unlock it is that yeah so if i just get halfway through the
process yeah so you're locked in that position so for instance yeah is that a quarter of a turn
turn on that screw there oh well unlock the mechanism well that's nice i like that could
you ever take the head off now that's it yeah so we think this has been future proof now obviously
um but what type of head you prefer so i tend to prefer the hex signal for when we're using
round uh conductors yeah so the pizza one yeah round terminals should i say and then um when you
get to larger terminals so say square terminals that you might find on the sort of cage clamps
uh a lot of the stuff you find in control gear so you prefer to try and match the
type of match the shape to that yeah yeah it's just you can see there's a nice flat area on there
obviously i don't it's it's as you get to the bigger conductors i think it's more of an issue
okay yeah that makes sense um so again this one but think there's some future proof it didn't come
with it but i think you can change the head on this so okay so you click that across so i'll just
just go for it click that there oh well that was easy i could take the head off now is this
does this mean in the future we are going to make you so you can um possibly uh have a selection
i can see a pouch already can't you all lined up in there with it sitting in there and you get
changed between your heads and that makes sense when you're doing a lot of that panorama and you
might be doing a lot of cage clamps and obviously maybe you move to a neutral or an earth bar or
screwed in connection and therefore you can change over maybe to the one that i call the
pizza you call the hex yeah now i'm just missing trying to get this back together now oh well i
mess around with this uh perhaps need to try some smaller conductors because we've seen them at the
at the top end yeah we have so we're going to go and it goes is it down to 0.08 something like that
for the smallest ones that it does yes which is phenomenally small isn't it another one for
you obviously as you're looking at these feral crimping for the ferrules themselves they're
silver in color okay they're made of a material called copper and we dropped a load on the floor
once and somebody said to us why can't we pick it up using a magnet yeah well we haven't managed to
magnetize that copper yet so we couldn't pick them up using that so they are they're tinned
but they are copper tubes aren't they yeah that's it yeah they're certainly not made
of steel they're not made of aluminium there's no dissimilar metal issues going on there um so go to
the other end of the scale i found some security system cable okay is that the thing is it still
it's almost difficult to see yeah if anyone remembers when you put a pir in those terminals
can be a bit of a pain i remember trying to twist them and double them over yeah so this is where
you need good eyes okay so this is we're in the uh back in the german Weidmuller system okay
and this is a 0.25 millimeter okay that's right that's really quite small yeah and obviously with
the amount of electronics out there in industry now especially even in the domestic market it's
probably a good idea to have a a ferrulel on the end isn't it so let's go in there with the
square profile one now you're gonna even struggle to see the square profile
but it has it's amazing that the size difference you can cope with
on this from that tiny i've never used a point zero eight millimeter
that must be a challenge um the one thing obviously we do like about this pizza base
one is this little guide that really helps you if you put that back down we'll have
another look at that so that's for the smaller conductors it goes up to four mil doesn't it
it does i'll bring that one in you can see we've got a little guide there
so 0.08 to 0.35 and then obviously the farthest end is two point five to four mil which helps
you locate it into that pizza cutter itself doesn't it give another go i'm gonna have
another garlic now the other way i could have done this was just pop the guide in actually
yep and then drop it through the guide you can hold it in there and then bring your conductor in
yeah that's a great feature on there you know probably a bit long on the copper there but
great tools as i said we've been using this one
we're getting that for two years yeah it was i think one of the very first videos we shot
in this unit was that actually on that feral crimping tool and we fell in love with it then
yeah and obviously now we've got this 360 as we said before you're working in a panel it's
not always the the way to go and you want to front end it you want to come in from the side
you've got the option of rotating around and i think as well on your wrist that is a lot easier
yeah this is super obviously you as you get bigger conductors you need more effort but that is very
very comfortable and you're in there all day maybe feral crimping yeah i'm building that panel up
huh it doesn't sound like a castanet there's nothing so the choice is yours obviously I'm
sure people have lots of comments when it comes to ferals hopefully we've dispelled some of the
myths yes we have hopefully but we want to hear your thoughts what tools are you using
have you got any other top tips put them below and gary will try and answer as many as you can