Cord End Terminals

This article will explain and tell you important information about cord end terminals. So, read on!

Nowadays, with many technology related innovations, as we create ways using electronics and or mechanics to come up with a comfortable way of living, we also get innovative enough to develop tools and devices that helps us to do so.

Dealing with electrical structures should be handled with caution to prevent electrical failures that could eventually lead to fires and other property damages.

Today, electrical structures and designs are made more convenient with easy wire connections.

Why Use Electrical Terminal Wire Connectors?

Thankfully, nowadays there are numerous tools and devices  that are now made available like electrical terminal wire connectors. These are used to join electrical terminations and create an electrical circuit.

These are electromechanical devices that can be used for primarily insulation displacement connectors, there are splice or butt connector types that permanently join two lengths of wire or cables.

With these devices, it also help prevent unwanted electrical failures and mishaps.

This type of device come in many different shapes and sizes depending on the size of the wire and screw. Several types of wire terminals include ring, spade, hook, bullet, and etc.

Let’s  talk more about a special type of wire connector called insulated cord end terminals.

What is a cord end terminals?

Cord end terminal is defined as a tinned copper sleeve, which is placed onto the end of the wire where it is crimped. In other words, cord end ferrules are used to insert the conductor into the connection or terminal compartment.

Its copper sleeve protects the fine strands of a multi-stranded wire and providing a gas-tight connection that prevents air or gasses (that lead to corrosion) to permeate.

This device is also commonly known as bootlace ferrules or cord end terminals and are manufactured from tin coated high conductivity copper with Polyamide 66 insulating sleeves. To be assured of product safety, it meets DIN standards for wire containment.

These cord end terminals are designed with a seamless barrel to contain loose wire strands for superior terminations at the end of a cable, before fitting screw type terminal blocks or connectors.

It allows easy insertion of wire into terminal block.

Using ferrules is suitable for limited space panel applications and is available in various multiple pin lengths for a variety of terminals blocks.

Does Cord end ferrules look like the tips on your shoestrings?

Yes, it does! But these types of wire terminal connectors called cord end ferrules have a more specific definition, and very different purposes in the world of electronics than the ferrules used for purely mechanical applications.

With this kind of tool, it can be described as a band or clamp that’s used to attach, reinforce, or secure objects such as wires to each other.

It can be sometimes be thought of as aglets applied to shoelace ends to prevent unraveling to the stout metal clamps used to connect wire ropes together.

This type of wire terminals mainly consists of insulated bootlace ferrules and non-insulated bootlace ferrules because it helps easy entry and laboratory tests have proven that the use of ferrules can extend contact lifetime by preventing an increase in resistance and temperature, which can lead to short-circuits and/or failures.

They are made from electrolytic copper capillary tube with a tin plated finishing to improve electric contact.

Most electronics professional considers using ferrules as their insurance against costly connection failures because it is evidenced to have sturdiness and can have prolonged usable life, a plus to its list of other benefits.

What do they look like?

An electrical wiring ferrule is a soft metal tube that is crimped onto the end of a stranded wire to improve the wire’s connection characteristics.

Cord end terminals provides an effective way not only to ensure the wire will be secure with all the lines enclosed by the terminal end but also provide a convenient way to mark and distinguish wires from one another.

Most ferrules are made of copper, which is usually plated with tin. The cord end ferrule is sized for a specific gauge of wire, both in terms of its diameter and its length.

Cord end ferrules are not just a simple cylindric type of device to just slip the wire into. Wire ferrules have lip or flare formed into one end that serves to collect the individual strands of the wire as they are inserted into the ferrule.

Cord end terminals has a conical plastic cable entry sleeve. The flare mentioned  in most ferrules is not immediately noticeable because it’s usually encased in this sleeve.

What is the purpose of the “sleeves”?

This sleeve acts as a transition between the insulation of the wire and the ferrule itself, and also serves to corral all those loose strands into the lumen of the ferrule.

The crimped on cord end terminal protects the exposed wire strands from damage from the screw, which results in a stronger connection.

The crimping on the cord end terminal then protects the exposed wire strands from damaging the screws in a strong connection.

Cord end ferrules are available in FIN, DIN and German Colors. What does it mean?

Unlike the other traditional crimp connections, the plastic sleeve of a ferrule is not compressed during installation.

It stays intact around the insulation and provides some measure of strain relief after installation by moving the bend radius of the wire away from the end of the insulation. And there is a reason why its colors in FIN, DIN and GER are always featured.

Cord ferrule sleeves are color coded for wire size in the DIN 46228 standard, which confusingly has two different codes, French and German, for the same cross-sectional area in square millimeters.

It is with good reason if it sounds these cord end ferrules are more a European thing than an American tool.  In order to get CE certification, electrical equipment must terminate stranded wire entering a screw or spring terminal with ferrules.

There’s no such regulation in the US, and it is not common to see ferrules used in American equipment.

Why use cord end ferrules?

But using ferrules in the field of electronics have specific advantages that are hard to deny and using them appears to be spreading because they make good engineering sense.

• It is because flexible wires are being used rather than solid wires in mobile applications and where vibration can occur. Stranded wire is flexible  but it’s still somewhat stiff because of the insulation, which wraps the strands of the conductor wires.

The insulation also helps to keep them all in intimate contact, and maintains the twist, or lay, of the separate strands. You will have to strip off a bit of insulation from the edge of the wire.

• Using ferrules prevent most cases where the lay of the strands is at least partially disturbed — they untwist a little.

It also helps to achieve structural integrity of the wires that will be used. If you strip off more insulation and the strands get more and more separated.

Take off all the insulation and the conductor will lose all structural integrity, falling into individual strands.

Other Reasons for Using Ferrules

With ferrules, it allow the connection to conduct its full rated current.

1. Using ferrules maintain the close association of strands in the conductor after the wire has been stripped.

This is the essential problem that ferrules solve. And if without cord end ferrules, the stripped stranded wires that were compressed in screw terminals tend to splay apart.

2. It reduces the number of individual strands that are in firm contact with the terminal thus making the resistance of such terminations is much higher than properly ferruled connections.

Cord end terminals include both insulated and non-insulated with the following features:

• made of tin-plated copper with high conductivity
• provide a neat end termination to tri-rated cable and stranded wires and are
• widely used in electrical applications.

Insulated cord-end ferrules are available in French, German and DIN colour coding system.

What are boot lace ferrules? 

Cord End Terminals are designed to terminate the end of a cable, prior to fitting screw type terminal blocks or connectors.

The crimped on cord end ferrule then protects the exposed wire strands from damage from the screw, which results in a stronger connection.

Standard length cord end terminals, known as boot lace ferrules have the following features:

• Manufactured from tin plated electrolytic copper.
• Available in a range of sizes in French and German colour codes
• Used to reinforce the fine wire strands when terminating a cable into a terminal or connector block.
• Provides improved continuity and neatens up connections.

How do you crimp wire ferrules?

Below is a list of tools and materials that you will need for  installation:

• Crimping tool
• Cable cutter
• Gloves
• Heat gun
• Wire stripper
• Handsaw

Make sure that the cable jacket or insulation layer has no filth, bumps, dents, damage, or unrecoverable scratches or he connector has no obvious damage, cracks, corrosion, or rust.

And lastly, a cable of a proper length has been obtained. The rest of the instruction below is almost the same with how you crimp other terminal wire connectors.

1. First, the correct size wire must be chosen for the terminal size, or vice versa. It depends on your needs. One you select them, next, strip the wires.

The amount of exposed wire should be equal to the length of the metal barrel on the connector, usually around 0.25 inch or so. You may refer to the tools for stripping wires mentioned above.

If the stripped wire fits up into the metal portion of the barrel with little or no free space, the connector is the right size.

When stripping the insulation layer, do not damage the cable conductor inside.

2. The wire should then be inserted until the insulation on the wire touches the end of the barrel. Insert the wire and terminal into the crimper.

Ensure that the end faces of cable conductor and cord end terminal are aligned. To use the crimping tool, the color of the terminal’s insulation needs to be matched with the same color on the crimping tool.

So, if the terminal’s insulation is red, use the spot marked by the red dot on the crimpers. If the crimper does not have color markings, use the gauge markings on the side.

After installing the OT terminal to the cable, ensure the length of the conductor extending out of the cord end terminal, is not greater than 1 mm.

3. Determine a proper cross-sectional area and crimp the head of the cord end terminal with the cable conductor using the crimping tool.

The wire terminal connectors should be sitting horizontally with the barrel side up when you crimp them. The tool is then held perpendicular to the terminal and placed over the barrel, nearest to the connector’s top part.

To finish the crimp, the tool is squeezed with enough force.

Check the maximum width of the crimped terminal.

Look for the Best Crimping tool to work best with!

Once you have selected your ferrule, the next item you will need to select is the crimping tool.

Unlike contact crimping tools which are very specific ferrule crimp tools tend to be more generic and will work for a variety of ferrules and will work with a variety of manufacturers as well.

The biggest difference you will see in the tools will be the shape of the crimp.

Always be careful with tools, and especially crimpers. If the crimper is not well designed and manufactured, you can’t rely 100% on the quality of your crimp, thus defeating all purposes of using a ferrule.

You can also look up on the internet for videos and blogs that can help you with your crimp projects.

Conclusion:

Using ferrules have obvious advantages over plain stranded wire, and in high-current applications. You can use them with screw terminals or whenever strain relief into shielding is helpful.

Due to its sophisticated design, they lend a clean and professional look to a project. Using this makes connecting wires into terminals easy.

There’s more to a ferruled connection than reduced resistance, though. Like other crimped connections, the strands inside a properly applied ferrule undergo tremendous pressure, in the process stretching axially and deforming radially.

Crimping wire terminals tends to disrupt and displace surface oxidation on the strands because it is stretched, while the radial compression tends to remove the air spaces between the strands.

These tend to make the crimped connection better at resisting oxidation than uncrimped wire. It increases the longevity of the connection.