How To Crimp Wire Lugs & Ring Terminals on 4/0 - 22 AWG Wire

everybody its name from explores dot life I teach people how to build DIY campers welcome to episode number three of my basic electrical skills series where I'm teaching you the 101 level skills that you'll need to tackle the next DIY electrical project in your camper we've already covered how to cut into strip wire in the first two episodes and today I'm going to teach you how to crimp wire lugs so let's get started now this video we're going to be covering how to crimp wire lugs as big as the Faurot lugs that you would find on battery or inverter wires and a small as 22 gauge wire for accessory runs now in this video we're only going to be covering ring terminals but crimping spade connectors like these or butt splice connectors or any other kind of connectors really it's pretty much the same process also the term ring terminals and wire lugs are generally somewhat interchangeable as they perform pretty much the same function usually the ones on wires 8 gauge are bigger are called wire lugs and the ones on tin gauge and smaller are called ring terminals somebody just wanted to make this difficult I'm sorry I don't make the rules here but that's the difference if you're looking for them so for the example I'm going to be crimping a wire lug on to two OTT wire and this is the tool that I use to crimp wire lugs from as small as 8 gauge up to 4 OTT this particular tool comes with a pretty hefty price tag at nearly 90 bucks but after I looked around on Amazon just a little bit I found one that looked very very similar that was closer to the $60 range and it looks to be the same so I'll put links to both of these tools in the parts list in the blog post now this crimper works by pushing this punch into the top of the wire lug and these sides flatten out the bottom of the lug now there's a thumb screw on the top that allows you to adjust the punch to fit various sizes of wire the wire sizes are listed right here on the side of the crimper just turn the thumb screw until this mark lines up with the appropriate wire size indicator now to crimp the wire stay in the crimper up on a solid work surface insert the wire look into the crimper with the top of the lug facing the indenting spike close the crimper just enough to hold the lug in place put a piece of heat shrink tubing on the wire and insert the wire into the lug hold it in place while closing the crimper handles now ul listing says that a to hotwire lug shouldn't be able to be removed from a 2-out wire with any less than somewhere near 300 pounds of force and I don't have a really good way to test that and I guess you probably don't either so shy of putting a harness on yourself and stringing this up to a rafter and hanging from it like we're not going to be able to do it so just give it a really solid yank to see and make sure that the lug doesn't come off now if it does you'll need to recruit the look after slightly tightening the adjustment thumb screw wire lugs need to be finished off with heat shrink tubing and hopefully you remembered to put it on the wire before crimping they're like because sometimes a heat shrink that fits the wire won't fit over the lug position the heat shrink so that it covers all of the barrel of the wire lug and heat with a heat gun until the glue seeps out the side now glue is only going to seep out the side for glue line heat shrink which I very much like if you're not using glue line heat shrink and you're waiting for glue to come out you're gonna be waiting a while now let's talk about ring terminals for smaller wire the ring terminals I like actually have heat shrink already attached to the ring terminals there are a few different brands but I'll put some of my favorites in the blog post the ring terminals that you can get from your local hardware store that had the nylon insulators on them instead of the heat shrink ones they just don't seem to hold as well and you still need to put heat shrink over it anyway and getting the heat shrink over those nylon insulators it's just kind of a hassle and I just I just don't like it so that's why I like these now this is a ratcheting wire crimper and is my weapon of choice for crimping terminals in the 22 to 10 gauge range now these jaws are specifically made to crimp these heat shrink terminals as they don't have a sharp spike on them that will damage the heat shrink like the crimper function you'd find on a wire stripper like this one but the crimper I like has three notches for various gauges of wire 10 to 12 14 to 16 and 18 to 20 crimping these ring terminals on to the smaller gauge wires is pretty similar to the big wires you just strip the wire back just enough for the crimp usually a 1/4 inch or so maybe not even that much place the terminal into the crimper and squeeze just enough to hold it into place as necessary insert the wire fully making sure that the copper of the wire goes all the way down into the barrel of the actual terminal and squeeze the crimpers until the lock releases now get the terminal a tug to make sure that doesn't come off easy and use a heat gun to shrink the heat shrink and that's it now you should be able to crimp wire lugs with no problem now next week we're going to be talking about ferals fair rules fair rules what they are and why they are awesome for turning messy will hair ends like this and keeping them nice and clean like this these are really really handy for connections like going into a Victor on charge controller now I hope you found this video helpful and if you did I'd love it if you gave it a thumbs up and shared it with somebody who you think could use it leave any questions you've got in the comments below subscribe if you want to see more DIY camper tutorials at hi I'll see you in the next video

Channel: EXPLORIST life Mobile Marine & Off-Grid Electrical

Views: 158,765

Keywords: ring terminal, crimp connections, ring terminal crimp, ring terminals, ring terminal installation, ring terminal connector, ring terminal crimp tool, ring terminal 0 gauge, ring terminal crimper, crimp connectors for 10 gauge wire, crimp connectors with heat shrink, ring terminal battery, wire lug, wire lugs, wire lug crimping tool, wire lug crimper, wire lug size, wire lug crimping machine, wire lug connector

Id: JmiX2XW48F8

Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 22 2020