Bootlace crimping tool recommendations

[Doddy]

It's not really controversial. Should you use them? EU wiring regulations require that stranded wire is retained if the mating terminal does not provide this (so that includes screw and cage terminals. The problem with stranded wire is that on installation, and also in use under vibration you can get strands moving from the contact area resulting in poor or failed electrical contact. Tinned stranded wire is not an acceptable solution.

Outside of the EU regulations can be more relaxed. And for a home builder it's not an issue at all, though good practise can still be followed.

There is an issue with commercial manufacture that you should use the ferrule manufacturers approved tooling which can come with significant $$ costs for the home builder, so the Amazon specials (one of which I have) are unlikely to cut the mustard from a certification perspective. You have to find a happy medium for which you're happy that the cost balances against your own requirement.

I do have a cheap one that gives a two-jaw compression pattern, I'm tempted to get a 4-jaw square-form tool similar to Wal's, but recognise that the 4-jaw is likely to give problems cold-welding to fine-gauge wires (as Clive reports) - ironically the (poorer) 2-jaw is more predictable in this regard.

If Jazz and others have problems with ferrules I'd be checking the crimp tool and the ferrules used to understand where the failure stems from. I wouldn't exclude poor quality / inappropriate mating terminal blocks particularly from the Far East.

(Anecdote: As an electrical apprentice back in the good ol' days, and spending a summer placement in an Instrument Laboratory testing calibrated crimp tools and resultant crimped assemblies I can attest to the mechanical strength of a good crimped terminal and the resulting predictable low resistance contact, and to the tedium of spending a summer testing these... but this was in an industry where the operating shake-and-bake environment had rather more significance than a CNC machine)

EDIT: What should possibly be considered is whether panel wiring should use solid-core cable where possible. I could understand and support that assertion, though I carry so little solid-core that I'd ignore that advice myself.