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Dumb question about 20mm crimper

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:47 pm
by osp001
The manufacturer refuses to help us, and we bought it new-old stock from a third party so I am asking here in the hopes that someone recognizes the problem.

We bought a second 20mm manual crimper, and all it does is mangle caps.

Disassembled, it looks like this Image

The problem is that instead of pushing down on the entire lid, the center screw head pokes out of this Image part and tries to poke through the septum of the vial.

I've disassembled it twice, and find absolutely no way that the screw is connected to that part in order to force down on the entire lid instead of just the middle.

Anyone seen this before, or know how to get it to crimp lids correctly?

Re: Dumb question about 20mm crimper

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:59 pm
by Peter Apps
See if you can find an exploded diagram on the web. I have a suspicion that there is a spring missing that should be pushing everything together.

Peter

Re: Dumb question about 20mm crimper

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 6:28 pm
by James_Ball
Assemble it and use it on a vial that contains a cap and see if it pulls the cap off.

I am suspicious that you may have a decapper instead of a crimper.

If you put it together and the jaws form a flat surface instead of a tapered one, and the hole where you vial fits is concave around the vial then it is probably for removing caps instead of installing them.

Re: Dumb question about 20mm crimper

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 7:13 pm
by osp001
We had thought it was a decrimper, too. Turns out it's a crimper for "flip-top" crimp caps, instead of crimping regular old aluminum caps on vials.

It stumped the guy at Kebby as well until I mentioned how the "pressure plate" (in the second image) is flat, except for the cone where the set screw goes, in contrast to our existing 20mm crimper.

"Is there a step on the inside of the jaws?"

Yep. Kind of a dog-leg to the inside of the jaws instead of the L-shaped jaw edge on our current crimper.

Turns out that's for flip-top vials. Lesson learned, and mystery solved, I think.

When they package these things, the product code is on the chipboard sleeve the box comes in, so the crimper and the storage box don't tell you what the product is since the chipboard is the first thing to get thrown away.

Re: Dumb question about 20mm crimper

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 7:46 pm
by James_Ball
Interesting.

In the lab we use colored tape to code which ones are crimpers and which are decrimpers (green and red) so we don't get them mixed up as easily. Always hated when trying to crimp a vial I grabbed a decrimper by accident.