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    Staff Engineer printbus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by clough42 View Post
    ...I sheathed everything with TechFlex braided sleeving and dressed the ends with heat shrink tubing and cable ties.
    Quote Originally Posted by RobH2 View Post
    I was going to ask about the sleeves on the cables. Glad you mentioned the name of it. It looks nice.
    The braided sleeving is great, but it can be a pain to work with. Unless it is cut with a hot-knife machine, the cut end on many kinds will tend to unravel as you do anything with it. TechFlex is a company name, with a wide range of products. I highly recommend searching specifically for the TechFlex Clean Cut material. It tends to unravel less when cut with just a scissor. I purchased a couple of different sizes from eBay for using in my build. I found the 1/4-inch size especially good at remaining intact.

  2. #2
    Engineer clough42's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by printbus View Post
    The braided sleeving is great, but it can be a pain to work with. Unless it is cut with a hot-knife machine, the cut end on many kinds will tend to unravel as you do anything with it. TechFlex is a company name, with a wide range of products. I highly recommend searching specifically for the TechFlex Clean Cut material. It tends to unravel less when cut with just a scissor. I purchased a couple of different sizes from eBay for using in my build. I found the 1/4-inch size especially good at remaining intact.
    Good tip. I'll have to try the clean cut.

    I've been using the cheap stuff, sold on eBay by seller "furryletters". It can unravel, but I just cut it with scissors and try to be careful with it. I secure the ends with heat shrink and zip ties. Another approach is hot glue lined heat shrink. I've been known to cut a sliver off a hot glue stick and shove it in the heat shrink to help secure the sheathing so it doesn't pull out. Zip ties are easier.

    One other tip: the sleeving melts very easily. Be careful when shrinking the tubing. I actually use a hot air solder rework station, which is way overkill, but really easy to control.

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    Staff Engineer printbus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by clough42 View Post
    One other tip: the sleeving melts very easily. Be careful when shrinking the tubing. I actually use a hot air solder rework station, which is way overkill, but really easy to control.
    Oh man, I had forgot about that and it's good you pointed that out. You definitely don't want to try and use a lighter on the heatshrink ends with this stuff. I've melted several braided sleeves that way. I think I've even melted a few using the usual paint-stripper kind of heat gun that big box stores sell when I wasn't careful with it. I forgot about it since a number of years ago I splurged for a 250W Weller 6966C hot air gun. It's specifically intended for delicate electronic stuff like working with heatshrink. That was definitely one of my smarter purchases for my electronics hobby work.
    Last edited by printbus; 08-11-2014 at 11:42 AM.

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