According to xray :
On 15 Oct 2005 05:20:55 GMT, (DoN. Nichols) wrote:

In the
smaller sizes, #16 (yellow) will also handle #14, and #10 (blue) will
also handle #12. (And the next smaller size, red, is rated for #22-#16.
The range seems to get smaller as the wire gets bigger.

I think you are talking about the color codes on the terminals?

Correct. Those are pretty much standardized now.

I was
just looking in my junk box tonight for some terminals to use on 12 Ga
wire. Yellow seemed to be the answer, but I only found a couple --
plenty of red and blue. Oh, well.

Yep. It depends on how much you collect at hamfests and other
such places. I'll give the sizes which I know (based on the rating of
the AMP crimpers for them).

26-22 Yellow (quite rare, and I'm not positive of this range)
22-16 Red
16-14 Blue

12-10 Yellow
8 Red
6 Blue

4 Yellow
2 Red
1-0 Blue

2-0 Yellow
3-0 Red
4-0 Blue

As you can see, there is a cycle of three colors -- just enough so you
can tell by eye when it is the next size up or down and obviously does
not fit.

Note that the AMP crimpers up to the 12-10 size tend to have the
ends of the handles painted the color to match the dies built into them.
(Often they have been used so long that the colors are still present
only inside the handles. :-)

Anyway -- the crimpers for the blue (16-14) terminals have one
handle blue, and the other green -- though I have never seen green
insulated terminals in that size range.

So I think maybe you got the gages and the colors confused -

Yep -- when I went back to add the colors in I put them in the
wrong place. Thanks for spotting that.

- or maybe
there is something else going on that I don't know about. If the codes
on my wimpy cheap cripmer are correct, red is 22-18, blue 16-14 and
yellow 12-10.

As I said above -- the AMP crimpers for (small) red are stamped
22-16 -- the only one which I know of for sure to have an overlap (with
the red). Though I *think* that the tiny yellow does overlap with the
red (at 22 Ga), but I don't feel like going down to the shop to check at
this hour.

And -- in the big hydraulic driven crimpers (#8 and larger),
there is a drilled dot on each half of the dies filled with the matching
color paint to the insulation of the terminals. And those emboss the
gauge in the insulation when the crimping is done, so the inspection
staff can verify that the right crimper was used. In the smaller sizes,
the dies emboss either one or two dots on each side of the crimp for
size verification, as the gauge number would be too small to easily
read.

Enjoy,
DoN.
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