Crimp Tooling Where Form Meets Function Quality, cost, and throughput are key attributes for any production process. The crimp termination process is no exception. Many variables contribute to the results. Crimp tooling, defined here as crimpers and anvils, is one of those variables. This paper will focus on defining key characteristics of crimp tooling and the effects those characteristics may have on the production process. Introduction Quality, cost, and throughput are associated with specific measurements and linked to process variables. Crimp height, pull test values, leads per hour, and crimp symmetry are some of the measures used to monitor production termination processes. Many variables affect the process such as wire and terminal quality, machine repeatability, setup parameters, and operator skill. Crimp tooling is a significant contributor to the overall crimp termination process. The condition of crimp tooling is constantly monitored in production by various means. These means are often indirect measures. Crimp Quality Monitors and crimp cross sections are methodologies that infer the condition of the crimp tooling. Visual inspec- tion of the crimp tooling can be used to check for gross failures such as tool breakage or tooling deformation which occurred as a result of a machine crash. Continuous monitoring of production will help determine when the process needs to be adjusted and the replacement of crimp tooling can be one of the adjustments that is made. Crimp tooling can a have positive effect on the quality, cost, and throughput of the termination process. High qual- ity crimp tooling can produce high quality crimps with less in-process variation over a greater number of termina- tions. It is difficult to distinguish critical tooling attributes with visual inspection only. Some attributes cannot be in- spected even by running crimp samples. This paper will present the reader with information that identifies key crimp tooling attributes and the effect of those attributes on the crimping process. Key Crimp Tooling Characteristics There are four major categories of key characteristics for crimp tooling. These are: Geometry and associated tolerances Materials Surface condition Surface treatment Each of these categories contributes to the overall performance of the production termination process. tooling.te.comGeometry and Associated Tolerances Terminals are designed to perform to specification only when the final crimp form is within a narrow range of dimensions. Controlling critical crimp dimensions is influenced by many factors including: Wire size and material variation Terminal size and material variation Equipment condition The final quality and consistency of a crimp can never be any better than the quality and consistency of the tooling that is used. If other variations could be eliminated, tooling can and should be able to produce crimp forms that are well within specified tolerances. In addition, variation from one tooling set to another should be held to a minimum. Crimp tooling features that are well controlled and exhibit excellent consistency from tooling set to tooling set can result in shorter setup time as well as more consistent production re- sults. Some critical crimp characteristics are directly defined by the tooling form and are obvious. These include: Cross Section Defining Crimp Width, Crimp Height, and Flash Crimp width Crimp length Other critical crimp characteristics can be related to several tooling form fea- tures and/or other system factors. These may be less obvious and include: Flash Roll, twist, and side-to-side bend Up/down bend Crimp symmetry Bellmouth The following discussion focuses on two characteristics, crimp width and flash, as examples of how tooling can affect crimp form. Similar arguments can be applied to the others. Crimp Width Crimp width is a good example of a feature that should be consistent and in control between different crimpers of the same part number. The reason for this is quite straightforward. For a given terminal and wire combination, it is necessary to achieve an area index, AI, which is determined by the terminal designer for op- timal mechanical and electrical performance. Crimp height, CH, and crimp width, CW, directly affect achieving proper AI. Area index, AI(as a percentage), is defined as: where At is the total area of the wire and barrel after crimping. A and A are, respectively, the initial cross- W B sectional areas of the wire and barrel before crimping.