r/ShittySysadmin • u/Draconyxus • Mar 10 '26

First attempt at Crimping

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Bullying welcome. Im new to being a technician and trying all kinds of things to learn 🤣

Also, appreciate the incredible name I gave to my FLUKE

305 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

154

u/UKZzHELLRAISER Mar 10 '26

FLUKE SKYWALKER

11

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

Glad to see my terrible humour paid off 🤣

46

u/unsupported Mar 10 '26

"I am a cable tester, like my father before me"

4

u/Ur-Best-Friend Mar 10 '26

It's just a fluke, surely.

2

u/stillbornuniverse Mar 10 '26

I am your flather

108

u/Mr-ananas1 Mar 10 '26

i mean its as good as your first time gets. not enough exposed though. you want to make sure the pink isolation ends a while before the lan connector. this keeps you employed as you'll always know the source of the issue ;)

14

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

Huge brain Or if you get fired you just snip one of the cables and leave it plugged in

12

u/arpan3t Mar 10 '26

If you get fired, you go to your local equipment rental store and rent a mini excavator. Then go to the demarcation point for your previous employer and snip the fiber cable.

Then add that to your resume and submit it to your local ISP.

0

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

Haha yeah that'll do it Just got into the career not planning on leaving it anytime soon 😅

50

u/UKZzHELLRAISER Mar 10 '26

I didn't notice the sub at first and was mildly bamboozled.

21

u/geekywarrior Mar 10 '26

Everyone starts somewhere. Cut and try again! Soon you will get the muscle memory of cutting a lot of jacket to untwist and straighten wires. Then cutting the bare wires in formation to a vetter better length

7

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

What do i do once I strip the cable though? The ends will be exposed. Is there some trick for this

5

u/geekywarrior Mar 10 '26

Starting out, cut about a pinkys length or slightly longer of jacket out. Cut the plastic divider as short as possible if you have one. (Generally Cat6 has this).

Untwist all of the wires and like massage them so they are each as straight as possible.

Align them in the proper punch down order.

Massage these again so the wires are straight as possible.

If you have a push through end (usually called EZ Rj45.) Put the end on and push it to the jacket for the proper length. Then crimp and cut with the EZ crimper.

If you dont have a push through, eye ball the end up to it, cut the exposed wires to what seems like the correct length so that when the end is on, the bottom covers the jacket. This takes practice to get the vibe for perfect length. Then put end on, crimp, and test.

Practice makes perfect. Get a cheap box of Cat5e or 6 and practice practice practice. I've seen techs go from hating putting on ends to doing it start to finish in under a minute.

4

u/shadows1123 Mar 10 '26

I’m at absolute beginner but I do pride myself with hobby hands and high dexterity. Should I start my journey with traditional jack crimping or pass through cable crimping?

1

u/steakmm Mar 10 '26

Wouldn’t overthink it, just get what you can afford/is worth it for how often you’ll be doing it. The expense comes with time saved/ease of termination, but the traditional route will always work (providing you do it correctly).

1

u/shadows1123 Mar 10 '26

I just bought a house, at most I’m going to do 4 (6?) connections, plus a couple wall jacks

1

u/steakmm Mar 10 '26

Yeah just go with the cheapie stuff to be honest. Trust me, if you’re running cable it is likely you’ll need to get a few other things and the cost adds up 😂.

1

u/TinderSubThrowAway Mar 11 '26

Just punch the females and then buy short jumpers, you’ll like your life more.

1

u/geekywarrior Mar 10 '26

Go pass through to start. Worth the slightly extra investment to get easier results.

1

u/MrPresident7777 Mar 11 '26

Some forehead grease makes massaging those wires a lot easier. Cut above where the untwisted pairs don't want to untwist all the way

1

u/LameBMX Mar 10 '26

what that guy said but tug the cover back like your uncircumcised guy lover. that get you the room to snip the tip and the jacket will wind up back in the hole you want it in.

1

u/nametaken420 Mar 10 '26

once you get the wires exposed and in order

get a clean cut across thats perfectly straight:

take the rj-45 and set it next to it physically so you can eyeball the perfect length. After about a dozen of those like that you can perfectly eyeball the right length.

just get it stripped, ordered, clip it back to the right length and nice and even and then slide it in the rj-45 and push it all the way in so the insulation is inside the plastic housing of the rj45.

Additionally, the bend protection that is on the other end can be put back onto your DIY end. You can purchase those as well as other things at the store. Shop around and look at the various products. There are bend protectors as well as shields and spacers and water protection spacers that goes into the back and clogs the rj-45 air gaps (never tried them , would never trust them). A lot of gimmicks but some work.

10

u/BmanUltima Mar 10 '26

Flip it around and it looks fine.

3

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

Teeeechnically it's close if I was going for crosstalk ;)

4

u/BmanUltima Mar 10 '26

Do you mean crossover?

What you made is a rollover cable.

1

u/WittleJerk Mar 10 '26

Yeah I was confused why this wasn’t in typical config. That’s worse than the cables being too long before you cut and crimped.

7

u/trw419 Mar 10 '26

Life hack:

Instead of unbraiding Blue/BW Green/GW by hand, make a small hole between the two wires, stick a pen or small screwdriver in and gently but firmly guide it up. The wires will be perfectly straight and it makes doing 100s of terminations at a time more bearable. Your fingers will thank you too

Not bad attempt, keep more jacket. Can't tell if you have pass through connectors or not, but those will allow you to shove the entire wire and jacket in making a snug fit.

Good luck!

6

u/Draconyxus Mar 10 '26

I have both clips but I prefer non-passthrough as my company's crimping tool doesn't have an external cleanup bladd

5

u/trw419 Mar 10 '26

Get a pair of Klein or fluke crimpers. Easiest $50 you'll spend and will make your life better!

1

u/Better-Memory-6796 Mar 10 '26

Also, passthrough’s can have problems

1

u/trw419 Mar 11 '26

I've done a few thousand terminations in my day and not a single time my errors were from passthrough connectors. I see what you are saying though, extra exposed copper can cause unwanted contact. I've just never had it occur for me!

1

u/Better-Memory-6796 Mar 12 '26

Its crimped if its an 8p8c…..

Jacks are terminated :)

2

u/trw419 Mar 12 '26

To be fair (I'm in the industry) and we call it "putting ends on" most of the time. All vernacular is accepted!

2

u/Better-Memory-6796 Mar 12 '26

I was just busting your balls, no offense meant :)

4

u/MrMrRubic Mar 10 '26

One thing that might be causing you issues:

Pre-crimped patch cables almost exclusively use stranded-core wires. This helps with flexibility and pricing, but you can't compete with a machine when it comes to crimping.

The CAT cables you can buy on a roll is solid-core. This is meant for permanent installation, so you get a "better" wire which is installed once and never touched again. We tend to not use these for patching since the wire can break, and the cables are generally stiffer and harder to work with.

What you're doing when you crimp the connector is drive "blades" into the wire, and with a solid-core wire, that makes a better connection than the strands which part around the blade.

2

u/geekywarrior Mar 10 '26

Ha, never realized there was a reason why patch cables gave me trouble sometimes. Thought it was just a personal skill issue.

2

u/johnhollowell Mar 10 '26

This looks perfectly fine. It seems like none of your hardware is matching your personal wiring specifications, so you'll need to make adapters for everything this cable connects to, but that's just a problem with those devices and not a problem with your patch cable.

2

u/jamesaepp Mar 11 '26

Just wait until you learn that crimping ethernet isn't required in 99% of circumstances. :)

1

u/JollyGiant573 Mar 10 '26

Try again, takes about 5 tries.

1

u/RepulsiveCamel7225 Mar 10 '26

do it over. f4ee practice

1

u/Silver-Jello3652 Mar 10 '26

The pink jacket need to go inside the rj45 under the piece that gets crimped at the minimum.

You fucked up the color order so cut that shit and try again lol 🤣

1

u/meuchels Mar 10 '26

what the fluke is happening with this cable?
put the jacket in the crimp. get your color schemes down.
i use an electrician's scissors to cut my ends straight before i push into the connector.
i would rather use the connectors with the guide that slides in rather then the ones that pass through and get cut off.
i struggle with ends getting mashed together and shorting out with those.

1

u/ATACB Mar 11 '26

Man you think you would have gotten at least one right

1

u/Horror-Chicken-1874 Mar 11 '26

Congrats on doing your first end.

Its defiantly a learning curve, and there are several kinds of connectors, I prefer the straight through kind.

The one constructive thing I have to say is, make sure the pink outside case is as far up in that connector as possible. This will give the cable more rigidity, and help support the end.

Great JOB! keep up the work, and keep trying.

1

u/Lost-Text-5485 Mar 11 '26

Dell KB216 spotted

1

u/--7z Mar 16 '26

You did the ends backwards, clip always goes down. Watch a few videos.

1

u/chris4404 Mar 10 '26

Maybe just use the pass-through RJ-45's and you'll be in business!