SUPERGLUE INSULATION TIP.

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Southernboy
Joined: Thu 07 Oct, 2010 12:39
Posts: 6436

  Z3 roadster 3.0i
Location: Johannesburg

SUPERGLUE INSULATION TIP.

Post by Southernboy »

Useful tip ?
I recently cut and shortened a USB cable for use in the Z. There are 4 very thin wires, a metal foil wrap around over them, and and outer woven wire mesh sleeve over the foil and under the plastic covering of the cable.
Once I had cut the cable to the length I wanted, I stripped back the coverings to epose the 4 thin wires. These are about 1/2mm with their plastic coatings, so once sttripped the inner copper wire is almost invisible, and a couple of them also had fine nylon threads around the copper wire. I used a bic lighter and burnt them off so they wouldn't interfere with soldering / joining to the other piece of cable.
I cut each of the 4 wires to a different length so that none of the 4 soldered joins would be in line with any other joint. I simply staggered the length of each and mirror imaged them with their counter parts on the other piece of cable.
I wanted to join the lot up, and use a length of heat shrink over the joint so the end result would be neat and negate the use of insulation tape over the joints and then over the entire worked area. I slipped a piece of heatshrink tubing over the cable and then soldered the 4 wires together.
Here's the SUPERGLUE TIP:- EACH SOLDERED JOINT WAS COVERED BY SUPERGLUE which I applied 3 times, allowing to dry between applications. This created a thin hard acrylic insulated shell over each soldered joint !! Thinner than insulation tape, and working with such thin wires, a lot easier to seal. Because I had also staggered the joints, they were insulated from each other anyway, but this ensured they were individually secure too. I finally soldered the wire mesh ends to their opposites, gently twisted the 4 wires a turn or two, and applied a couple of drops of superglue to the twisted area. This "froze" the whole joint area together. Finally, I slid the heatshrink over the worked area, heated and shrunk it over the area and adjacent cable to complete a really neat job.
Yes, there is a 40mm section of the cable where the joint is which is inflexible, but this is desirable since the soldered wires are so thin, and consequently the ammount of solder is seriously small, I didn't want to risk them coming apart by a flexible joint area.
"Normal is overrated"
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