How many Rj-45 should i crimp a day to be good at it?

faintingheart

How many cables should i crimp and punchdown each day to be good? I was thinking of buying like 100 rj-45 with a crimper and bulk of utp cable and just crimp a couple a day to be solid at it. What are your opinions on this?

thomas_

If you've never done it before, do it for 8 hours straight and you'll get the hang of it. Do it 8 hours the next day and you'll be decent.

In all honesty, if you can do it once you can do it a hundred times. The only thing that is going to change is how fast you can do it. If you want to practice I would probably only make 5-10 cables and do 5-10 punch downs total.

Finally, if you know that there are two major types of mod plugs and crimpers( Amp and WE/SS), you'll know more than a lot of people who make cables.

faintingheart

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So you're saying, that i can reuse the same cables over and over? without buying 100 rj-45 and bulk of 1000 feet cable? I'm gonna look into Amp and WE/SS.... thanks.

Breadfan

Here's how I learned when I was studying for the Network+:
We moving into a new house (brand new) and the builder asked how many drops did we want in each room. Wife wanted 4. He was charging $40 per drop (this was for phone only and cat 3). My coworker suggested I look into a structured panel from Leviton and do it myself. I researched it, and got one from Home Depot. With the help of a friend, I did both Cat 5e and RG-6 to a panel in our office. Almost 2000 feet of cable combined including a drop to the NID. The builder gave me two weekends to get it done. I bought a tester and the tools for cheap at HD too. A bag of 100 plugs is dirt cheap. I just had to keep reminding myself it was 568-A standard not B. But as long as you are uniform on both ends you are okay.
Nothing like learning on the fly. I used mnemonics to help me remember the pattern and how to do it. Once you do a handful, you develop your own style. If you start getting errors on the tester, you find what you are doing wrong early on and can correct it.
That might not be right for you, but it worked for me. Just wanted to say that if you have the opportunity to make real cables instead of ones to mess around with, then do it. Trial by fire.

Good luck,

Breadfan

thomas_

faintingheart wrote: »

So you're saying, that i can reuse the same cables over and over? without buying 100 rj-45 and bulk of 1000 feet cable? I'm gonna look into Amp and WE/SS.... thanks.

You can reuse the cable, just have to cutoff the ends and redo it. You CAN'T reuse the mod PLUGS, but you CAN reuse the mod JACKS. I'd estimate you could crimp a 10 foot cable 20 - 30 times for practice before you ran out of cable. A bag of 100 would do just fine ig you really want to crimp that many for practice.

Another thing to know when it comes to wire is stranded vs. solid. Solid cable is for inside wires, for example from a wall outlet to the back side of a patch panel. Stranded is for patch cables, which are used to connect the front of the patch panel to the switch and from the wall outlet to the PC, printer, etc. On top of the AMP vs WE/SS style mod plugs you also have stranded vs solid. The biggest difference is how the connector sctually makes contact with the conductor. I believe with solid plugs the contacts pierce the shielding and go down around the cable and with stranded the contacts actually pierce into the conductors. I've heard you can use solid mod plugs with stranded cabling, but you can't use stranded mod plugs with solid cabling because the stranded mod plugs' contacts can't pierce through the solid copper conductor and can result in an intermittent connection issue with the cables.

It's also good to know the difference between riser and plenum cabling. If a cable is running above a drop ceiling, that is being used as the return for the air handling system, then the cable should be plenum rated. Plenum rated cable doesn't give off as much toxic fumes when burned as does riser cabling. I've read discussions where people have mentioned that it's advisable to always use plenum rated cabling above drop ceilings because supposedly according to some sort of code, any leak in the air handling system necessitates the use of plenum rated material. Since you can't tell if there is a leak in the system, you should run plenum to cover your butt. Of course in practice plenum is a lot more expensive than riser cable, so plenum usually only gets installed where it's truly needed. Of course there are always shady contractors that will try to cut corners and install riser cabling even though the contract specifies plenum cabling.

faintingheart

Breadfan, great advice, thanks.

Thomas that was great in depth information, that really help thanks.