How to Crimp Your Own Dupont Connectors to Jumper Wires

I really like to use pre-terminated M/M, F/M, and F/F wires such as these found on amazon:

The 0.1″ pins fit into breadboards and most breakout board male or female headers.

Sometimes, though, the pre-terminated jumper wires are either too long or too short and I want to make a custom jumper wire.

To do this, you will need a crimper, male and female terminals, housings, and 22AWG wire.

I purchased an IWISS SN-28B Crimper from Amazon:

I purchased male and female pins from pololu:

https://www.pololu.com/product/1931

https://www.pololu.com/product/1930

and also the connector housing:

https://www.pololu.com/product/1900

I had no luck finding an explanation on how to crimp the terminals onto the terminal and destroyed a few learning. So I decided to post an instructional video of how I crimp the ends with success:

Update: I’ve had this for about a month now and have found multiple unexpected uses for it like building decent 9V breadboard connectors:

Oct 2016 Update:

Everyone complains about the clarity of the video, and they are right – it sucks. I use a lumix dmc-lx7 which is a great still camera. But the video can suck. It seems it focuses at the start of the video and never again so close up videos like this don’t work well.

Admittedly, I never really expected this video to be viewed by anyone but myself so I didn’t care. Surprisingly, it has ended up being my top video.

Rather than waste time trying to make another video that will almost certainly have the same issues, I will post a series of stills here which should make the process much clearer.

Here is an enlargement of a dupont terminal:

The crimper will bend two sets of tabs (though there are actually 3 sets). The far right tabs will attach to the insulation while the center set of tabs will attach to the conductor. The very small set of tabs right before the bridge are not bent (at least not by this tool).

First, prep the wire by stripping it such that the insulation is going to be grabbed by the first set of tabs and the conductor by the second. The bridge gives you a little slack so you don’t have to be too exact on where to cut the insulation:

Now note the ridge inside of the tool’s jaw. You are going to align the terminal such that the left side of the insulation tabs (using pic above) butt up against this ridge.

Here is the terminal in place in the tool with the tabs against the ridge (note that the .1″ style terminals use the center crimp on the jaw):

Now close the jaws just enough to hole the terminal in place:

Here is the other side:

With the wire already stripped and the tool holding the terminal snuggly, it is fairly easy to insert the wire into the terminal:

Do take another quick look to verify the conductor is past the 2nd set of tabs before you squeeze the tool tight and finish the crimp.

here is the completed wire and terminal:

May 2022 Update:

The link to the video has been replaced with a new video that provides much sharper images.