DIY Breadboard Jumper Wires : Crimp Pins & Connector Housing

We written before about breadboard jumper wires and solid wire for breadboard wiring. We told you that solid wire is perfect for huge amount of work primary because breadboard jumper wires are costly. Here is how to create your own professional grade DIY breadboard jumper wires of any length with crimp pins, connector housing & other tools. Those jumper wires you buy has machine tooled pin headers. We will use stamping process and get rectangular housing of the pins.

Total cost going to be decreased but ideally you need a plier like tool – crimper. Instead of crimper you can use your existing needle nose plier. As for brand of pliers, wire stripper I suggest Klein or Irwin as brand. We have over century old inherited tools manufactured by Klein, Irwin & Stanley. Stanley is good but cheaper alternative. We bend pin nail with needle nose plier. Heavy duty is the word. These days hand tools quality no way comparable with hand tools from old days, still Klein’s quality is good. If you purchase evergreen hand tools from good manufacturer, that will remain forever. Hozen P-706 is possibly a known brand for crimper for this purpose, IWISS crimping tool also good.

Basically we need very long wires to become breadboard jumper wires, odd things ends to be jumpers. $50 – 100 investment is obvious. Of course you can use anything tool to “crimp” for cost saving.

Needed Things To Create DIY Breadboard Jumper Wires

You need 22 gauge wire, crimp pins, connector housing for crimp pins, wire stripper, crimper and skill. Pololu is the company who became famous for manufacturing crimp pins, connector housing for crimp pins. They are American company ships stuffs worldwide. They also have 3″ to 60″ wires with pre-crimped terminals.

If you need to buy 22 gauge wire, buy standard stranded copper wire from real life shop. Wire from online stores usually will cost higher for packaging and weight. Here are Pololu’s resources :

They are for breadboard. There are other types of jumper wire crimp pins which are square and not intended for breadboard. These are 0.1″ (2.54mm) jumper wires with single housing. There are other jumper crimp pins available on all over the earth! Make sure before you order. There are also kits available with single, double, triple, quadruple housing. Like this :

Separate “Dupont jumper wire cable housing shell connector 1p pin header 2.54mm” sold on all major online shops like Ebay, Amazon. 100 will cost $2.5. Like this :

Crimp pins will come as strips, you have to cut individual crimp pins at their base, strip the wire and push it inside crimp pin, then crimp it and finally push the thing inside black coloured connector housing. That connector housing has a catch system. This is the matter. Here is a nice blog with an excellent video (for our purpose) demonstrating how to crimp and the description is very helpful :

Making DIY Breadboard Jumper Wires With Crimp Pins & Connector Housing

Crimp pins are of male and female variant, connector housing has no gender, like usual connectors. I have created an kind of infographics for understanding how to do the work.