Chip C wrote:
On Dec 4, 7:57 am, George wrote:
mark wrote:
Greetings Again All,
Am I the only one who has a hard time crimping connectors onto cat 5 cable?
I have a cat 5 crimping tool and follow the instructions, but my success
rate is pretty low. Any hints??? Thanks, Mark
It isn't standard practice to wire as you described. You run solid CAT5
to the jack and punch it down. Then you use a patch cable to connect to
whatever device is being used on that jack.

This bears repeating: the solid-conductor cable that runs in walls is
meant to be punched down to the back of female jacks, either at a
patch panel or at a wall jack. Crimp-on male plugs are normally for
stranded-conductor patch cords. Solid conductor cable is more likely
to break if it's frequently flexed, and hard-to-crimp translates to
unreliable connections.

Exactly.


If you really want to do it, I believe there are plugs and crimp tools
made for solid conductors. If yours aren't labeled as such, they're
not.

And to expand even more even though there are plugs made for solid cable
they are a mickey mouse concept because they aren't approved or rated by
anyone. They somehow evolved as an item for use for folks who don't
understand why they are a really crappy way to do things and that the
right way isn't much more involved.

We are fighting this now at a temporary office. Someone was thinking
they were saving the prior owner money or maybe they consulted the
experts at home depot because they crimped plugs onto solid cable. It is
a holy mess, you touch stuff and it looses connectivity and wiggle it to
get it working. This is exactly for the reason you noted earlier. 28 AWG
solid is pretty fragile. We are redoing everything properly next week.


Chip C
Toronto