Swaging Wire Rope Stop Sleeve

[JohnH]

Hi all. I'm glad you're here. No one seems to be able to tell me the simplest thing about using my new Lehigh 18" swaging tool. It, and all of the other hand swagers I have looked at, says that it does both oval and stop sleeves. Mine, however, will not do the stops. The 1/8" cavity in the jaws works for the oval, but has about the same diameter as the stop sleeve. I am guessing that the next smallest cavity (3/32") is supposed to be used for the 1/8" stop, but the jaws do not open wide enough to get the stop into the 3/32" cavity. Just barely almost but no cigar. So it must be a manufacturing defect with the swaging tool? The stops are to spec - .343 dia. All I really need to know is if you are supposed to use the next size down. If so then I could do a little modification to allow the stop to enter the tool. Of course, a specification for the cavity radius would be better, but not knowing even what terms to search, finding it could take me weeks :-) And I really don't want to make my own jaws for this thing anyway... but thanks for the help!!!

[JohnH]

Well, I checked some of the same model I found sitting on a shelf in home despot, and found one that would accept the stop. So I concluded mine had a manufacturing defect not allowing the jaws to open that little bit more. Some grinding and adjusting got it, but the swaged diameter looked like it could have been bigger or something. There was flash where the radii of the cavities met like in a molded part. To try to improve that I will round the corners a bit. I will try to post some pics later. Thanks again.

[dalecyr]

You did not address this, but I feel compelled to, for the benefit of others that may not know:
there is only one acceptable way to tell if you have crimped the oval, or the stop correctly.
use a "go-nogo" guage.