Patent ID: 7086261

Claim:
A quality determination apparatus for determining whether a crimp state of a crimp contact terminal is good or bad when the crimp contact terminal comprising a bottom wall for positioning a core wire of an electric wire and a pair of crimp pieces upright from opposite margins of the bottom wall and a core wire of an electric wire are held between an anvil and a crimper and are crimped, the quality determination apparatus comprising: an information input section for inputting information on the crimp contact terminal, the electric wire, the anvil, and the crimper and an input compression ratio of the core wire of the electric wire; a calculation unit for calculating a calculated compression ratio of the core wire based on the information; an estimation unit for calculating a total length of the bottom wall and the pair of crimp pieces after crimp in a cross section orthogonal to the core wire based on the input compression ratio and estimating a cross-sectional shape of the bottom wall and the pair of crimp pieces after crimp based on the total length; a crimp height calculation unit for finding spacing between the anvil and the crimper applied when a difference between the input compression ratio and the calculated compression ratio of the core wire of the electric wire falls below a predetermined value; and a determination unit for determining the crimp state of the crimp contact terminal based on the cross-sectional shape estimated by the estimation unit in the spacing found by the crimp height calculation unit.