<snip>
The good news
is I also have a large collection of molex, amp,
paladin, et. al. crimpers from surplus sales, etc.
The bad news is all the firms which sold them off in the LA area are
gone, along with jobs they created, which would not be so bad right
about now (or anywhere). They didn't migrate, they just went away.
Jim
When a computer costs $3000 you can get a decent job and afford one,
plenty of people have jobs locally making and supporting them. When a
computer costs $300 it is made in some other country and you might not
be able to afford it since you are out of work.
How often do you use those specialized crimping tools, and on what
hardware? The only specialized crimper I use is a set for doing CAT5
ethernet, got it in the late 90's and use it all the time.
I am on a hiatus from doing much hardware, but I have pulled them all
out at times. Latest was a lot of 8 pin work for a phone system. One
of my customers bought a duplicate of what I could have pulled from
stock for $300 recently, before I could stop them.
I do mostly serial cables, some single pin crimping when doing wiring.
I did manage to snag a bunch of crimpers for the big 25 pair cables from
amp, ampex, and really never have had to use them, but I have loaned
them a few times. That much cabling has finally gone from me having to
have much to do with it in favor of a lot of networking, which I don't
really do, just have done.
I did do a lot of 1A2 switch work, but my phone system is stashed, since
we sold our house in 2004. Our mobile home is now served by vonage, and
a collection of wireless, rather than the nice 5 line phones we used to
have. We punted the wired phone for cell for a couple of years, then
added vonage. If I was not so lazy, I'd figure out how to do the phones
w/o vonage, but I doubt it would be worth the money I'd save because the
voip world changes so fast. I do have free dialtone a few places, but
don't use it.
Rarest thing I have are the weird dec MMJ 6 pin serial connectors and
crimper, because of wiring a data center full of alphas, as far as on
topic for here.
Also have an AMP press, and a couple of T&B presses, with a lot of
chucks for said. Those can go for scrap metal, then 2 weeks later
people want $1000 for a set of press, and a couple of chucks. I hate
that, and hopefully won't ever have to buy any at the high end.
I understand that all of this begs the obvious need in some settings to
have traceable tooling and that this is just for hack jobs. A lot of
the stuff people probably get are timed or worn out junk from various
manufacturing settings. I try to buy at least at the top of the food
chain, unless the crimper is really rare, and looks potentially useful.
Jim