Probably one of my favourite electrical tools, and because it’s so bloody fast and precise, I probably use it all of 20mins a year. I WANT TO MAKE ALL THE RIBBON CABLES!
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huh. Thanks for the peek into what’s beyond cutting the ribbon cable with office scissors and putting the connectors on by abusing a pcb vise! 
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Look, I’m not here to criticise anybody’s lifestyle choices 
Anyway, this is what happens when you spend too much time on eBay, and don’t want to pay £15 for a cable - you buy excessive quantities of tooling, connectors and cabling. 
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And the reason the cables cost that much is that the guy making them bought his 3M tools new 
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And paying over RRP from RS… (I’ll caveat that I love RS).
That said, they definitely make their money back on using cheapo cable and connectors 
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I just use the vice from my drill press with it and I love it too !!!
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This thing
seems to work well and does not entail going out to the freezing cold garage workshop in the middle of winter. It is however far less sexy than @bymccoy’s device.
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I’d been eyeing up a TE handheld one as well - but as soon as I saw a U.K. based bench one, complete with the right jig and tooling, it was a no-brainer. Got an awesome deal with that, a load of big ESD euroboxes, ESD PCB holders, ESD testers, wrist straps etc plus a load of ESD bits (like brushes, and pens etc). And they chucked in a load of ribbon cable. Only one is 10-way, but with 20 and 30 way ribbons, I can rip them down to size.
I avoid the generic no-brand tooling, as it tends to be trash (I’ve got a few from Maplin that are just awful), and instead buy second hand tooling from TE etc. Can get some real bargains, they’re designed to spec and they’re built to last.
staple item I use too, very quick and alot of use I agree
I got one of those today and it is indeed a nice little quality of life improvement. My pcb vise thanks you!
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at first: “I dont see whatchu talking about”
then: “I need to see if mine has that”
disappointment as i find mine does not.
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I was actually relieved to find that mine didn’t because I had this dread moment that I bought a tool i didn’t need.
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