Quality Test & Inspection: How Good Are Your Crimps?
If wire harness manufacturers want to offer world-class products, crimp testing is mandatory.
Quality standards are getting tighter, and customers expect their vendors to have quality assurance systems. This is as true for wire harness assemblers as it is for any other manufacturer. Having a good quality system will not only show prospective customers that your company is serious about quality, but it might also help you win an order against competitors with little or no quality systems.
In the crimping world, the two most common tests for crimp quality are crimp height and pull force. Why? Because terminal manufacturers specify crimp height, and specifications from United Laboratories, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the military set minimum pull-force requirements. Crimp width is also specified by terminal manufacturers. This specification is important, but it’s usually assumed to be correct because the width of crimp tooling rarely changes unless something goes wrong.