At some point in your electrical pursuits, you’ll need to make a connector. Maybe you’re designing something that will connect to another device, or maybe the spaghetti mess of wires coming out of your Raspberry Pi has become a pain to deal with. Whatever the reason, a proper connector can solve a lot of headaches in electronics projects.

Your first thought might be to run to your favorite component distributor and order the connectors, terminals, and crimping tool. Unfortunately, those tools can cost thousands of dollars. Maybe you’ll just solder the connectors instead? Don’t! It makes for easily damaged connections.

Fortunately, [Matt Millman] has a great guide on wire-to-board connectors. This guide will explain why you should never solder crimp terminals and then get into working with some of the most common wire-to-board connector families.

For example, the Mini-PV series (which often get called “Dupont”) are one of the most ubiquitous connectors in hobbyist electronics. They’re the connector on those rainbow colored jumper wire sets, and connect perfectly to 0.1″ pin headers. The connectors and terminals are cheap, but the official HT-0095 crimp tool costs over $1500. Most crimp tools make a mess of these terminals since they require a cylindrical jaw to crimp correctly. By using a combination of two unofficial tools, you can crimp these connectors properly for under $60.

If you want to learn more about the art of wiring, the NASA Workmanship Standards are an interesting read.

[Thanks to MarkMLl for the tip!]