sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Replacing C5's

They wear out after a couple of hundred punchdowns on the same row on an MDF/IDF after you have a 265 pound tech leaning into it over a 20 year period. They had been here for 10 years before I got here. In reality there about a 1,000 of these damn things. One department, the 200 C5's, likes to play musical chairs. That's why I'm trying to figure out a patchpanel replacement on a Witness interface I asked about in another post.

Anybody know anything on the hold down tool TTT mentioned in his post?

Removing - Use a sharp pull and make sure you don't have someone standing behind you.

Don't use the 5-pair punch for anything other than cutting down the cable and seating the C-clip. If you use it to actually punch down your cross-connect wire, it will wear things out, and the terminations are less likely to be reliable. This may vary depending on the brand of 110 and/or punch tools, but in general I would say it's a good idea to stick to the single 110 punch tool after the C-clip has been seated.

I don't use 110 blocks very often, so do i have to use this fancy 5-pair punch to get these c-clips seated properly, or can i push them down by hand? Can I use a rubber mallet? Can I use a regular punch down tool with a 110 blade?

I grab them with slip-joint pliers, flex it up slightly, then down to spread the "wings" that lock it in, then just pull.

Butch, my very first 110 job entailed using a mallet, but it didn't do well for the clips in the center area of the block since it flexes a bit there.

Using a regular 110 tool won't generate enough impact to seat the clips, not to mention it won't distribute the force along the entire clip.

Use the proper tool, a mallet.... seriously?

If I hired a sub to terminate 110 and I saw them using a mallet, they would be gone before they got to the next cable.

Please don't take my answer as disdainful, I just don't see the point in doing something if you don't have the correct tool. You can get away with using a standard 110 tool if you put a little shoulder behind your punch, but I would save that for the one offs here and there. If you do more than a dozen of these then you need the cannon tool.

D