Why all the fuzz about wire ends?

You might ask why should you even care about wire ends. You could just cramp them in and screw those suckers down, what works isn’t stupid! Isn’t it?

Well, let me introduce you to Ohms Law, but in a rather funny way.

What you see in this simple cartoon is the basic principle of how electrical current flows through any electrical conductor. Ohms Law basically states that a thin wire has a higher electrical resistance than a thick wire of the same material.

Now when you think about your poor un-crimped wire ends wrapped around some screw inside a terminal it is easy to imagine that since they don’t form a solid object the resistance will be higher since only some of the fine wire strands will actually act as a conductor. Some of the wires just stray around and don’t contribute to conduction and therefore increase the resistance.

Too much of electrical resistance leads to higher temperatures at that exact tight spot of the cartoon. If the conductor is really thin and therefore the resistance very high you have all the ingredients of a decent cable fire!

Luckily this all can be avoided with very little effort which I will explain to you in this article.

Equipment needed for bootlace ferrules

There are a few things you will need in order to do this the right way. Mainly you will need:

1. Side Cutters
2. Ferrule Crimp Pliers
3. Bootlace Ferrules

Identify the right sized ferrule

Ferrule Too Big

How to do a proper crimp