DEMO: How to assemble RJ45 ends

The equipment you need

Here is some of the equipment that you are going to need in order to accomplish this. First of all, I have got the crimper here, and this is a must in order to accomplish this job. Then I have got the RJ45 end, and of course the cable that I am going to put it on to. I also have a little cheat sheet here, to make sure that I get the pinout correct on the ends of the cable.

Then I have got something that will take the outer sheath off. This is not necessary; there are some other ways that you can do it, but it makes it a little bit handier. You will need something to cut the cable. This is not a standard pair of scissors, this is what is called snips. We are going to use the snips to cut the cable, and they are pretty strong, so all I have to do to use snips is just cut it like that. They are pretty powerful. Finally, one thing that I should have is a tester to test it at the end, and so I have got the tester over here.

Removing the outer sheath

The first thing that I am going to need to do is remove the outer sheath. I do have my tool here, so I like to go maybe a couple of inches down, and it runs around just like that. You just twist it. What it is doing is cutting the outer sheath. There is a certain razor blade that is in here, and it is cutting that outer sheath without cutting into the wires. It does not completely cut all the way through, or it cuts most of the way through, so you have got to put a little pressure in order to pull this off afterwards to break that final little amount.

You would not want it to cut into the inner sheath, or the little plastic that goes around the cables, because then you could short out one of the cables, or it is going to cause some problems. So when you pull this off, you want to make sure that you have not cut into these wires at all, or the protective layer around the wire. If it does, then you may need to make an adjustment to your tool to make sure that it does not cut into that.

Perhaps I need to take this further down. What I can use is this little filament that is sticking out here. I like to give it a little cut here, and if I do that, then I can actually take this and pull it down and take more of the sheathing off. So now I can just take this off like that. That is not typically something that you need to do, but something that you can do if you need to.

For me, I am just going to want to make a clean end here, so I am going to take that off right there. I am going to once again take my sheath cutter and go a couple of inches down, and then I will peel that off. It takes a little bit of pressure in order to do that. I do not need this filament, because I do not need to take any more of the sheathing off, so I am going to cut that sheathing off right there. Now I see my four pairs that are here.

Arranging the four pairs

What I am going to do now is start breaking out the four pairs into the pattern that it is going to need to fit into my connector. The next step to do this is that I am going to have my little cheat sheet here. Sorry, it is not in color for now, but it does have the little O's down here for orange.

The first conductor here, the first wire that I have, pin one, is going to be white orange. So I am going to move and adjust the orange to be on the left hand side here. Now, as I am working with this, I want to make sure that this is not too twisted up in here, because that is going to make it difficult later on. Right here at the base, when it comes out, I want to make sure that there is no twist down there.

So I have got the orange there. The next one in there is going to be green, and the green actually gets split up between the blues. The white green and the green green are going to be straddling the blue in the center. So I am just going to move this off to the side here, move the blue to the center, and the brown is going to go on the outside. Now I have my cable set up the same as my little cheat sheet here says.

Then what I can start doing is start unraveling these. Once again, I am going to unravel them until they are just right to the sheathing that is right there. I do not want to get it untwisted below that, because then that is going to start attacking the integrity of the signal. I want it to be unraveled right there where the sheath is at. That is important, but I do not want it to go any further.

Once I have got the brown separated out, I like to take my thumb and run along here. I do it so it has a slight bow to it. You can see that it has a bow and arches just a little bit. I am going to move that so we can get a good view of this. So now you see how I am arching these cables.

Now I am going to do the same thing with the orange right here. I am going to untwist this, untwist it to the part where it is definitely untwisted right there, where it meets the sheathing, but no further past that. I need to make sure that my white orange is first and then my orange orange is next, that solid orange is next.

Then I am going to take the greens, once again untwist it down to where it gets to the sheathing and not past that. When I get to that point, I want the white green to go to the left and the solid green to go to the right. So once again, I am matching my pattern on my cheat sheet there. Then I am going to do the same thing, and I want to untwist it down to the point where it gets down to the sheathing, not much past that.

Then I am going to run my finger along there and make it all nice and smooth. See, when I am running my finger there, what it is doing is taking that cable and smoothing it out. Now, the pattern, you can see it is white, orange, orange, white, green, blue, white, blue, green. So it is toggling between the striped and the unstriped. I actually got the blues flipped around, so I need to flip them so they are like this, and make sure they are not crossing each other right where it comes out of that sheathing. So I might need to be doing some adjustments.

One reason why I splay it out like this is because it helps me manage all the different colors, and I do not see color all that well. So this helps me make sure that I am not twisting any of those pairs. Now I have got it all splayed out and in the proper order that they need to be.

I might need to do some adjustments here just to make sure that if I pinch here, I want it to be relatively flat. I do not want cables to be pinching each other, so I just kind of work it a little bit. I have learned this over experience, that just working it a little bit will set you up for success, so that way when you put this into the jack it is not going to get crossed and none of the colors are going to get flipped. So I work it by kind of pinching the bottom here and just making sure they all fall into their proper line there, and also making sure that the wires are all smooth.

When I am ready, what I am going to do is collect these all and put them all together and massage them, almost massage them so they are in a straight line. Then I am going to put it into the connector. Of course, I have actually got to cut some of the excess off, so I will be cutting the excess off. I do not do the next step until I am really ready to do it all in one motion, or in one kind of setting, because once again, I want to make sure I do not end up crisscrossing any of these wires.

So I am going to take it now and take the fan and put it all in one straight line, making sure that once again they do not cross. When I am taking the fan, I am pushing it all together, and then I am pinching the bottom so they do not lose their spot, but I grab the top and here is the massage that I go through, twisting them around just enough to get them seated. I do not want to stress the wire, so I am not going to twist it too much, but I am going to get them all in line. You can see how they are starting to fall all in line right there at the base.

Cutting to length and seating the connector

Now what I am going to need to do next, now that I have got them all in line, is insert it into the RJ45. But this is way too long. If I were to put these into the end of the RJ45, you would actually have a lot of crosstalk and your data would not be clean data. So what I want to do is cut this. I need to figure out where I am going to cut it.

To figure out where you are going to cut it, I am going to take a look at the connector. You can see that there is a little wedge on the connector, and what that wedge does is push down over onto the sheathing. I want that wedge to actually crimp that sheathing just a little bit. I can also see that right after that little wedge, it starts tapering within there. So what I am going to want to do is want the sheathing to go past the wedge, but not into where it starts tapering.

So I am going to now line that up. I get it on the side here and line it up, so that way I can get that sheathing right where it starts tapering. Then I pinch the end that lines up with the end of the RJ45 connector. So I line those two up. Once again, I have got the sheathing where I want it to be, and I am pinching the very end where I want to cut it, which is going to be the end of this connector.

Now that is all lined up, I am going to take my pair of snips and cut it across here. Those wires like to go everywhere, and I want to make sure that that is completely even. There, they are nice and even and flush.

Now what I need to do is, pin one is that first white orange, so what I will need to do is line it up with the pin one of this RJ45 connector. I hold it up to my diagram to make sure I have got it the right way. I would not want to flip it around. This little tab here lets me know which way it is supposed to go. The tab is on the back side with this diagram, so I flip it around so that this is facing up right here.

Now when I push into here, I am going to just gently guide it in, making sure none of my cables cross. There are little channels within this RJ45, and so those cables find their little home. Then I give it a little twist back and forth just like this to make sure it is all seated. I also look on the end, and you should see those cables; you should see the shiny end of the cables there. I also look on the side and make sure that it is pushed all the way to the end.

So I am going to check this real closely and make sure that I have got all of those ends going all the way to the end of the RJ45 connector. Once again, I am looking for the shiny dots right here, and I am looking at the edge here to make sure it is all the way at the end of that little channel, and that all of the connectors are at the end of that channel. All of the wires are at the end of the RJ45 connector now.

Crimping

Now I can take this, and this crimper actually has two parts to it: the RJ45 end to it and the RJ11. I need the RJ45. The little tab goes into this little notch down here, so I am going to put that in there. Once again, I am going to want to make sure that I am careful.

Oh, I do need to open this up. This right here has a little locking mechanism on there, so I push that down and the locking mechanism pops up. Now it is ready to accept this connector in here. Once again, if I wanted to lock that, I could just push that down and it locks it into place.

What I am going to do is push this into here and make sure it is seated well. I could double check those ends again, make sure that they are all the way there. The other thing too is I want to make sure my sheathing is all the way up to where that taper happens. Once I make sure I have got all of those elements there, then I am going to crimp it down. I like to give it a good nice crimp on there and then pull it out. I can see that now that wedge is pushed down into that sheathing, so now it is a nice tight seal right there.

Testing the cable

Now what I am going to do is test this, although I have to have both ends on here. So I am going to put an end on the other side so that way we can test this.

Now that I have got both ends on this, I have got the same ends on this, so this is a straight-through cable right here. If I wanted to make a crossover cable, I would make a T568A on one side and a T568B on the other side. This is just a straight through, so I am going to test this as a straight-through cable.

I am going to click this side into this connector, and then the other side I am going to connect into my tester right here. Then what I will do is turn it on. When I turn this on, it is testing a T568B. The C means there is continuity, and the T means that there is no crossover within here. So it first of all tests to see if you even made a good connection, and then second of all, if the cables fell into the right spot. This is checking everything, and everything passes and it is giving me a pass code. So everything is good on this. That, by the way, each one of these is your different connectors in there.

Now that everything has passed, just a note that if yours did not pass, I would not worry about it too much. I would say probably more than 50% of my students do not make a good cable the first time they run through it. The reason is because there are a lot of little things that can go into this. There are a lot of little variables, and if done wrong, there is a good chance that your cable is not going to work. That is why I am very deliberate in all of those steps that I do, to up my chance of being successful on making a good cable. If you did not make a good cable, not a big deal. Just clip off the end and go.