​You can make a living from making ethernet cables? Impressive.

​says the crimp virgin

I work for a company that makes lots of different network cables and fibre cables not just cat5e and cat6e cables

I make cat5e and cat6e cables for a living and never have a problem strip the jacket 25mm and straighten the cables with the shaft of a thin screwdriver then group them into colour code cut down to aprox 10mm and push into connector or if cat6 it should come with a little black guide piece that the wires go in first then into the connector

I don't usually have to feed them through small holes as I use solid core cable to sockets. (As I said, I don't have any difficulty maintaining the twists with sockets) The only time I use male to male cables is the short run from the socket to each pc, this needs some slack anyway. At the other end, I have sockets lined up a fixed distance from the router, so standard 0.5 metre cables work with that.

On the other hand, cable lengths up to 100m are specified, and as you are very unlikely to get near that in the home, you can accommodate some issues in a less than ideal connection because there will be correspondingly less loss in the cable.

Terminating your own cables is useful for two reasons: you can make them exactly the length you want, and you can feed them through small holes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/ol/B004J02DRU/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=new

£2.49 now

An interesting article, but, as anyone who has written for Wikipedia knows, your 'job' is to regurgitate citations, for the user, it's the citations that are important, and there aren't many here. Articles which begin 'needs additional citations for verification' require just that :smiley: I think it has always been common knowledge that the twists need to be maintained, this may simply be 'best practice' in reality. in a home network, there are few connections anyway. I still think it's better to buy than make, a good cable should have been tested anyway in ways that the ordinary user cannot, and I don't mean using a simple cable tester! Nowadays even home networks require considerable bandwidth, there are many reasons for a failure to achieve necessary speed, so it is good to think that physical connections are not one of them :smiley:

Apologies.

The post I was commenting on has a number of incorrect statements. 1) Signal to noise not relevant as Cat5 can run Gigabit well cover 100m 2) There is talk about maintaining the twists - again not correct. 3) There is talk of not getting megabit speeds even damp string will get that type of speed I think the writer meant to say Gigabit.

The twist frequency needs to be understood in the context of why we twist the cables in the first place. Early network cables were thick and heavy they used metal shielding to protect the cables from interference. Modern network cables have less (or no) shielding. This makes them thinner, more flexible and cheaper. To cope with interference modern cable have data sent along a pair of wires known as a balanced pair. "In balanced pair operation, the two wires carry equal and opposite signals and the destination detects the difference between the two. This is known as differential mode transmission. Noise sources introduce signals into the wires by coupling of electric or magnetic fields and tend to couple to both wires equally. The noise thus produces a common-mode signal which is canceled at the receiver when the difference signal is taken.

This method starts to fail when the noise source is close to the signal wires; the closer wire will couple with the noise more strongly and the common-mode rejection of the receiver will fail to eliminate it. This problem is especially apparent in telecommunication cables where pairs in the same cable lie next to each other for many miles. One pair can induce crosstalk in another and it is additive along the length of the cable. Twisting the pairs counters this effect as on each half twist the wire nearest to the noise-source is exchanged.

Providing the interfering source remains uniform, or nearly so, over the distance of a single twist, the induced noise will remain common-mode. Differential signaling also reduces electromagnetic radiation from the cable, along with the associated attenuation allowing for greater distance between exchanges.

The twist rate (also called pitch of the twist, usually defined in twists per meter) makes up part of the specification for a given type of cable. When nearby pairs have equal twist rates, the same conductors of the different pairs may repeatedly lie next to each other, partially undoing the benefits of differential mode. For this reason it is commonly specified that, at least for cables containing small numbers of pairs, the twist rates must differ." - Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair

No, don't get me wrong, I know how it could be helpful, but really it's not that hard to make a cable with the wires in the correct holes. I know it sometimes does happen, but paying 3x as much for connectors is a false economy when you consider how many you'd probably get wrong if you were making a few.

All connectors are transparent, but because the wires have fine such stripes on them it's still easy to get it wrong. Another advantage of this connector is that there is no risk of any cores being too short.

Edit: sorry, Spannerzone has already made these points.

How at man ya stingey **** give me full heat x

​there is a art to it but practice makes perfect it's easy once you know the knack to it

someone that has the patience of a saint or someone that should get a new job :smile:

I've never used these either and have managed with regular plugs but these would make the job quicker for me as I'm a bit colour blind and usually sods law dictates the colour coding is lousy on the cable I'm using and if using those plugs you don't need to worry about getting the length right, just shove an inch through and you're good to go by the looks of it.

​I crimp about 500 hundred a day what's that make me

Personally I've never terminated a RJ connector that I couldn't see the wires through before crimping. I can see how these might help, but they're not worth it for what you get IMO.

Twits are never important!

Nice - ordered some. Thanks for the tip. Yes they're expensive but, in my case, absolutely worth it.

contemplating buying one even tho I've never ever actually needed to use one.....

Every one needs a tool for the job and mines called jim

Apart from the last sentence, this comment doesn't make sense to me.

So is it worth getting these or is it just cheap and nasty quality ?

Been a right numpty in the past use to throw away so many cat 5/6 cables in the bin as soon as the connector broke off or the wire split !

Have now upgraded to snagless cat cables but kept some of the old ones which I guess could be repaired but certainly sounds a tricky process to get the wires in the right slots !

The twists are only important over several meters they are all set to prime number frequencies to minimize the number of coincident twists. There will be material difference conferred by the last few cm.

These tools are fine for occasional use and work well. Heat++

Same with mine, which is a shame because I like the blade arrangement better on these

It's great isn't it! - shame they're about 75p a plug but would make fitting a plug take seconds rather than minutes I reckon.

What a simple and effective idea.

​maybe you terminated your cable too early. make sure it's shielded or you might get a shock

If all RJ45 plugs were like this EZ plug there'd be much less time wasted with fiddly wires going into the wrong slot.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/RJ45-Connectors-CAT6-Cable-pieces/dp/B000FI9VU2

That top review is amusing :smile:

I have a pair of these that came with a kit a year or so ago..well I say have, they went in the bin.

They were useless - very poor crimp tool that failed to get a good connection and generally just did a bad job. I bought a replacement from maplin which cost £10, and that has been faultless. Just not worth the hassle Imo.

I'll have you know I've crimped some of the most beautiful cables in the world! Sometimes crimping several cables at once.
It got very hot and sweaty at times and there was no communication afterwards.

Any good offer for a hdmi crimper?

for the price, does it works well? I mean for RJ45, I have like this before and can't press securely fit.

That's 40 connectors mind, with a 100% success rate!!

I own a pair of these, mine are rubbish and don't squeeze the rj45 connector enough for the barbs to pierce the installation. I would not recommend them, my advise would be to get a pair where you can squeeze as much as you need without the rj45 shaped hole in this pair.

​says the crimp virgin

I on the other hand have the exact same tool and I have successfully created over 20 cables without a problem

I will say this tho, the unguarded blade is lethal, you will need to put an elastic around the handles to hold it shut when u store it otherwise expect some cuts when you grab it !!

This deal is a complete let down, I was expecting something to help me perfect a four way crimp...

https://youtu.be/G1SBQ1udYno

I work for a company that makes lots of different network cables and fibre cables not just cat5e and cat6e cables

I make cat5e and cat6e cables for a living and never have a problem strip the jacket 25mm and straighten the cables with the shaft of a thin screwdriver then group them into colour code cut down to aprox 10mm and push into connector or if cat6 it should come with a little black guide piece that the wires go in first then into the connector

The main trouble with these tools is maintaining the twists of the pairs of wires AND THEN get them in the very small individual holes. Yes, it's easy to get them in if you push then straight it, but unless you maintain the twists, you won't get good signal to noise ratio and you won't get full speed, particularly at megabit speeds. They will work, of course. It's possible to get a special crimper that uses dies, but it's much more expensive.
Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort.
Sockets however, are much easier.
However voted hot for the price. :smiley: