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For all you DIY guys who will use them a few times a year, they are great and will do fine for your home networking projects. If you're a professional, you will probably want the Ideal or similar brand of crimpers for the hundreds or more of connectors you'll do a week. I never use the strippers or cutters on the tool as they never seem to do that great a job without more effort than a razor knife and wire cutters, but that is the same with all other brands of the same tool across the board. These RJ Crimpers do the job as expected and have a fairly solid feel to them. The ratcheting mechanism could be a little better, but for the price it does just fine.
The major thing is that it crimps RJ-45 and RJ-11 connectors to their respective cables, and it does this exceedingly well. I figure if I need to cut a Cat5 cable I'll just use a pair of pliers, so I'm not too concerned. Would recommend to anyone who needs one of these. Excellent build quality, especially for the price. Wire stripper works well and the crimping part, well, crimps, but I can't testify to the cutting portion that another reviewer complained about.
It is a round opening in one of the handles with a cutting blade in the other handle. It does exactly what the casual user needs. I used the tool to make RJ45 connections, and had no faulty connections, so I give this a 5 for doing the job, and less for the overall quality of the tool and the poor docs. The purpose of the feature is to require the operator to fully close the handles during crimping. 1) It cuts and strips flat cable, and the cutting depth for the stripper is adjustable. The lower quality construction is evident, and the documentation poor. I store mine in the package it came in. I used a small wire nipper for this, not a wire cutter designed to cut 12-18 gauge wire.
I didn't see this noted in the limited documentation. I have experience with similar, higher-priced versions of this tool. The handles are supposed to release when the connector is fully crimped. This feature doesn't work all that well on this tool, in my opinion, but the tool still makes good connections. This feature actually comes from better-quality tools.
3) The feature that "locks" the handles for storage is not correctly described. Close them all the way, and they will spring open again. If you are in the business, spend a lot more; I don't think any home user will regret this purchase. If you want to /store/ the tool, close the handles most of the way, and they will stay closed. That blade cuts through the insulation, and reasonable care must be used not to nick the wires within. If you close these handles all the way, they release, just as the better-quality tools do. That said, this is a very nice product for the price.
The point is to ensure that the connector is fully crimped. I would trim some anyway, because the wires are not even after they are fanned out to go into the connector. 2) It will cut the covering off of round CAT5/6 cable, but one must be careful, and there doesn't seem to be a way to measure how much of the insulation to remove. I removed more of the insulation than I thought necessary, then trimmed the excess once I had the wires all lined up to go into the connector.
A solid, nice, handy tool. This is fine as most people use it for network cable. I bought Remee cat5e bulk cable from ebay for home networking, cheap and high quality. It can strip, cut, and of course crimp. It can crimp both RJ45 and RJ11 connectors, but the stripping blade is set for cat5e cable size.
If it isn't enough pressure, no problem, you can adjust it, it has a little knob. It can crimp, it can cut, an also has a little space where you can strip your cable without damaging the threads (apart from the cutter), just perfect.It has a mechanism to prevent damage over the connectors, allowing just the necessary pressure over them.
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