Nowadays most of RF Coaxial connectors are crimped as regular hexagon on raw cable. A round center pin is crimped as regular hexagon on the inner conductor while a round ferrule is crimped as regular hexagon on the outer conductor (braid.) Do you know why regular hexagon is so popular for RF cable assembly ?

To have better performance on RF cable assembly, the metal parts (center pin & ferrule) must contact the raw cable as much as possible. A regular hexagon provides 6 contact points on round cable, which makes the whole cable assembly reach the best performance and also provides enough crimp strength.

But why don’t we crimp the metal parts as octagon or regular dodecagon that provide more contact points than a regular hexagon ? Because the metal parts are made of beryllium copper, phosphor bronze or copper…etc. Octagon or regular dodecagon increases the difficulty of crimping because of the metal stress. If the metal parts are not crimped properly because of the metal stress, the whole cable assembly would not have enough crimp strength, so the RF connector might fall of the raw cable easily. And the crimp die might be damaged soon.

So currently a regular hexagon is the best solution for RF cable assembly.