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Does anyone know of a tool that can make jumper wires to fit standard spacings for breadboards?

What I have in mind is a jig where you dial in the number of rows you want the jumper to span, insert your chosen single-core wire, and the tool cuts a piece of wire to length, strips the ends and maybe even bends them.

I've bought jumper lead kits before, but I'm not a fan of them because they always seem to have one colour per length. I'd prefer to keep my 'traces' the same colour, which is hard to do with such a kit.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ hmm. that would be useful \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 15:11

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What you're looking for is a sort of lead forming tool. The most common such tools don't strip wire, as they're usually used for components such as resistors.

The usual hobbyist version I've seen is a plastic device having a series of grooves in 0.1" increments. Perhaps you could use one of those as a cutting-and-stripping guide before bending.

Googling around, the CM-01 on this page claims to be able to form insulated jumpers and isn't obviously overkill, but I didn't find a price.

I also found various hand tools which automatically cut and bend, or just bend, to an adjustable width, but that would probably make stripping the short ends difficult. I also found high-priced fully-automatic jumper forming machines.

Perhaps a little more research starting with these keywords might turn up something useful.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Hand held lead forming tool \$\endgroup\$
    – Martin
    Commented Mar 28, 2011 at 8:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ Close, but not exactly what I'm looking for. The plastic thingy is interesting though.... \$\endgroup\$
    – Marty
    Commented Mar 29, 2011 at 16:41
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Well, you can buy the individual parts to make the connectors, and crimp them onto any wire you like. Pololu sells the parts to do this (sockets, pins, and housings).

In terms of crimping the connectors, you can go anywhere from a $200 tool for crimping an entire housing in one go, to a $30 single crimper, to an effectively free pliers and patience approach.

Alternatively, they also sell pre-crimped connectors, in a random selection of colors.

EDIT:

Oops, I seem to be thinking about the wrong type of jumper cable. Oh well.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ How do you escape dollar symbols? \$\endgroup\$
    – Eric
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 15:14
  • \$\begingroup\$ dollar symbols are the delimiter for $LaTeX$ math markup. You can create a dollar sign with LaTex with this syntax: $\$$ $\rightarrow\mbox{ }\$$ \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 17:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ Isn't there a way of typing a dollar that doesn't invoke the $\LaTeX$ markup? \$\endgroup\$
    – Eric
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 18:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ no. The latex markup expects the dollar sign. There is a request in to change this but do not get your hopes up. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Commented Mar 28, 2011 at 12:00
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I'm four years late to this question - but this "Wire stripping guage" from BreadBoardManiac looks like the closest you can get for the time being. It screws onto a normal pair of wire strippers, and lets you easily measure off how much to strip. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/252587878/stress-free-great-tool-for-breadboard-wire-strippi/description

Permanent product page is here: https://wakutuku.com/shop/breadboardmaniac/bbm-wsg.html

Still, I would love to have a one-squeeze device that cuts, strips, and bends. Maybe I'll design one someday if I'm bored. :-)

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