Key art image for Crimp Housing for Makers

The thought of soldering a circuit board when I’m still playing and learning how it works seems like a waste, but I’ve found a few situations where I wanted something between breadboard and permanent project. Enter crimp pins and housing.

What are they?

Crimp pins come in male and female forms and can be attached to the end of thin electrical wire.

The crimp housing simply covers the pin, protecting the exposed wire and fitting.

Example of the Crimp Pin and Housing

Most electronics kits come with a batch of single wires with the crimp pins and housing done for you.

The advantage of making your own is you can do any combo of wires and housing sizes.

Crimp Pins

The pins can be attached using a crimping tool, which requires practice to get right. It’s still 50/50 on whether I get it right.

The following video was my main source for learning how to do this and I would strongly recommend it over anything I can say on the matter.

Crimp Housing

The crimp housing is a plastic cover and each pin slides in and is kept in place by a small plastic latch on the housing.

Image illustrating the crimp housing latch

Example Use

After getting the USB serial cable working with the Pi, I wanted to make it easier to plug in the cables, so I popped-out the pins from the individual housings and put them into a 3x1 housing.

Viola, easier to use and I’m using the housing arrow to point to the top most location.

Changing the USB serial cable to use a 3x1 crimp housing

Note: I left out the fourth pin (red cable) because I’m more likely to plug the Pi into a stronger power source, meaning this cable won’t be used.

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