A few months back, I bought some Molex PicoBlade housings and pins but no means to crimp them. Many times I was searching for more information on crimping them, but haven’t quite found what I needed. But now, I finally found what I was looking for. An affordable, universal crimping tool for micro connectors.
What is the general name of the game? Generally, “trapezoidal crimping” tools are what you can use for crimping connectors similar to Molex PicoBlade. Here is a variety of oversized crimping tools inside this product catalog, for example.
20200223/https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/American%20Electrical%20PDFs/Full%20Line%20Catalog.pdf
So, here’s my deal pick, the Engineer PA-09. Great price and relatively easy to use. That expensive Molex tool that is recommended in the Digi-Key links? That is the “production-grade” tool for making lots and lots of crimps quickly and efficiently, hence the higher price tag, not to mention the higher need for lubrication maintenance on that more complex tool.
20200223/DuckDuckGo how to crimp molex picoblade
20200223/https://www.eevblog.com/forum/manufacture/crimping-tool-for-molex-picoblade-connector/
20200223/DuckDuckGo Engineering PA-09
20200223/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvdePo12vIM
20200223/https://forum.digikey.com/t/engineer-pa-09-universal-crimping-tool-20-32-awg/282
Alas, now I discovered that I could have bought the readymade Molex PicoBlade cables had I known better. Alas, I must admit, the ability to crimp on connectors is very important if you want to repair or modularize some existing electronics that were originally cheaply made in China.
20200223/https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/m/molex/off-the-shelf-cables