PanaVise 506 IDC Retrofit Kit for 502 PanaPress

First off, to use this as a crimping press for standard 0.1" ribbon connectors you will also need "PanaVise 510 Series Connector Base Plate for Female Socket Transition Connectors". Wasn't at all clear from descriptions even when studied closely. I think they've got the name for this completely wrong as Socket Transition connectors are something entirely different to IDC ribbon connectors. Very confusing. I give it all three stars (being generous) because with some crude fixes, it works quite well and quite efficiently. It's far from perfect, but much easier to use than the red handle hand-held IDC crimp tools you can buy for around $20.The "connector base plate" bought separately is a block of aluminum with two grooves cut so you can locate your IDC connector (with polarizing bump) into it. We use generic 0.1" IDC's and they are a loose fit and the connector moves around so the cable ends up not being perfectly straight. Also the block itself is a loose fit in the IDC Retrofit kit adding to the problem. Some tape holding it steady solves that. And a short section of flat phone cable is perfect width to jam in the groove so that the IDC connector fits snugly without moving around. Too bad its so crudely made.There's a movable bar that you are supposed to use to align the ribbon cable up to to ensure the perfect angle. The bar comes loose easily, also isn't perfectly 90 degrees, but it works. Mark with a red pen where you need pin 1 to go, and you have a reasonably OK solution for mass hand crimping of IDC's.If you want a different pitch of IDC connector (2mm for example) you can contact PanaVise, and after getting past the very resistive receptionist, you can apparently have them custom make you a block to fit your IDC connector. We'll make it ourselves though, I think the quality, price and speed will all be much better.So I partly agree with the existing 1 star review, partly want to give four stars (because once you've made your crude fixes it works) but PanaVise do little to make it easy to understand what you need to buy, and its really quite expensive for what it is and could easily be SO much better.For about the same price as the entire setup you can buy an electric or pneumatic IDC crimper machine from China. But they look lethal - push the footswitch at the wrong time and you've crimped your fingers! So I settled on this as the best I could find safe solution even though it's quite expensive and poorly made for what it does.

GoodIdea, let down by quality and the IDC adapters just don't work.