[John V.]

Never had much luck making nice looking crimped terminals with the simple crimping tool I have had for years. For general purpose, I was okay with my amateur crimps.

I'm looking to crimp some Packard 56 Series terminals, male and female, with the matching shells so I bought a Meterk ratcheting crimping tool. I'm hoping for a good looking result.

Wonder if anybody has used this tool to crimp the old school Packard terminals and knows which of the die blocks I should use.

I don't have a large supply of terminals so I am hoping not to waste any with test runs, like to get it right the first time.

For the female 14-16 ga. terminal, it looks like I can crimp the bare wire wings with the JX-1601-2546 die with the terminal in the 6 mm opening, then reset the terminal to crimp the wings over the wire insulation.

I'm using 16 ga. wire.

The die is not stepped so I figure I shouldn't try to crimp both sets of wings in one step.

But the male terminals look to be a bigger challenge because of the little tabs at the rear of the terminal. Looks like I won't be able to crimp the wings in 2 steps. But I'm not sure I will be able to successfully crimp both sets of wings in a single step with the die choices I have.

I'm thinking the same die with the 6 mm opening could work for the 14-16 ga. male terminals but I also need to crimp some male terminals for 10-12 ga. wire, the wings on these terminals are larger and don't seem to fit in the die.

Some pix of my stuff to follow.

Anybody experienced with the Packard terminals that can offer advice on how to do this to produce a good looking and tight crimp?