CAT7 Crimping Tool K-C7A

• Built for the plugs that defeat standard crimpers: shielded Cat6A and Cat7 RJ45 plugs are fatter, stiffer and carry a metal tail clip that has to be crimped onto the shield — this tool has the die and the dedicated clip-crimp area for them
• Parallel vertical action: the die comes straight down onto the plug instead of swinging in on a hinge, so all eight contacts seat evenly and the plug cannot tilt as it crimps — the usual cause of one or two high contacts on thick shielded plugs
• Compact palm-grip body: worked one-handed, at arm's length inside a cabinet or above a ceiling, where a 200 mm pliers-style tool needs room you do not have
• Two cavities: 8P for RJ45 from Cat5e to Cat7 (shielded and unshielded, pass-through and standard), 6P for RJ11 / RJ12 telephone plugs
• Strip and cut are on the body: the STRIP slot takes the jacket off, the CUT blade squares the conductors and trims pass-through ends — the termination is finished with nothing else in your hand
• LOCK button keeps the tool shut in the pouch, T568A / T568B chart on the body for the colour order, and a choice of blue or yellow so a crew can tell tools apart at a glance
• Private labeling made to your requirements — labels with your logo, part numbers and barcodes on the inner boxes and outer cartons, ready for your warehouse

A Cat7 or shielded Cat6A plug is a different animal from the Cat5e plugs most crimpers were designed around: the body is bigger, the cable behind it is thicker and stiffer, and a metal tail clip at the back has to be closed down onto the cable's shield so the shielding stays continuous end to end. A hinged pliers tool attacks it at an angle — the die lands on one side first, the plug can rock as the handles close, and the contacts end up seated at slightly different depths.

This tool crimps the way a press does: the plug sits in the front cavity and the die block travels straight down, driven by the palm handle above it. All eight contacts are pressed in the same plane, in the same moment, and the tail clip is closed in its own crimp area afterwards. On shielded work that evenness is the difference between a link that certifies and one that fails intermittently and passes on re-test — the worst kind of fault to chase.

The working sequence is printed on the tool itself. The cable goes into the STRIP slot and turns once to part the jacket; the pairs are dressed to the T568A or T568B chart on the body and fed into the plug — pass-through plugs let you pull them through and check the order at the face; the CUT blade squares the ends; the plug goes in the 8P cavity and the handle comes down once, fully. Telephone plugs use the 6P cavity the same way.

Care is simple: keep the die faces free of the copper whiskers that trimming leaves behind — a whisker across two contacts is a short waiting for a humid day — and store the tool locked. The lock button is not a detail: an open crimper in a pouch finds cables and fingers; a locked one packs flat and stays a tool, not a hazard.

• One K-C7A CAT7 crimping tool (blue or yellow)