Wire Sleeve

I’m looking at this pic in the shop

Wire Sleeve

and wondering if that’s a blue clicker pen or some sort of tool to make passing larger plugs thru the sleeve easier?

Both!

It appears to be a blue clicker pen being used to make passing larger plugs easier. My guess is they’re using it to help keep the end from unravelling and to give them something to push on for expanding the sleeve.

One more thing for me to add to the “Why didn’t I think of that.”

Geez I miss my old South Bend lathe, it’d take no time at all to turn a little aluminum ‘bullet’ to push thru while dragging the harness behind it. Might have to work out printing something like that.

I never did actually print this, but I collected it a while ago so you don’t even really need to design anything to print one up!

That’s pretty neat! I was thinking of something a little more simple, something like a well-rounded flattened arrowhead shape with a bamboo skewer in its base to push it thru the sleeve, just tape the connector to the skewer and have at it.

I’m hopefully getting my conduit deburring tool today, cut it with a pipe cutter which gives a nice square cut but leaves a lot more burr on the ID than I care to wrestle with using a little hand held deburring knife.

But when I’m ready to start pushing wires/connectors thru the sleeve I think I’ll be able to make a little tool fairly easily.

That won’t work on the expanding sleeving we’re using. The sleeving doesn’t have the slot down the side of it.

One time at work we were way behind building cables so I ended up building a bunch of cables for about a week. I am a software engineer, and definitely was not experienced with kind of thing at the time. Long story short, the wire loom was nicknamed, “Jeff’s nemesis”.

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DAng that is kinda funny I have no idea why I took that picture. Maybe just for a size reference? Shoot, that is gonna bug me.

And I learned something, the pipe cutter leaves a big enough burr on the ID that won’t allow the deburrer to fit inside without working it over with a round file, kinda defeats the labor saving purpose of the deburring tool.

And, back to square one I go.

IMO, I wouldn’t bother making a tool, the Dupont connectors slide thru without snagging much.

Since the loom is basically like a Chinese finger trap, you can expand the diameter by pinching in two places and pushing them towards each other. Using this method, you can walk the end along length…just pretend you’re a snake swallowing an egg.

You can thread a hundred of feet of wire before your printer would even be warmed up.

Oh, and after I used my scissors to cut the loom to length, and flamed the ends to prevent unraveling, I stuck the scissors into the loom and pulled the handles apart to open the end a little.

Uh, DuPont connector? :dizzy_face:

If you want to talk about camshafts, pistons and compression rations and the like I’m in, it’s gonna take a while for me to get up to speed on the electrickery lingo.

I thought I’d seen a pic of the LCD cables running thru a sleeve and thought that might not be so easy to do?

I cut mine with a saws-all or an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. The deburring tool worked great to clean up those cuts.

I have a pipe cutting tool, but couldn’t imagine the number of turns it’d take to cut the pipe.

It was actually pretty easy and yields a nice square cut but in retrospect I wish I’d just used a hacksaw, the cutter leaves quite a burr on the ID. I’d ordered a deburring tool from Home Depot but I have to do so much filing to insert the tool I may as well just file the entire ID. I picked up a step-drill bit from Harbor Freight this AM that’s supposed to be 3/4" but is actually .738 and no help so two tools to return. ;o(

I’m going to deburr the OD with a Scotch-Brite wheel in the bench grinder, smooth the ID a bit and just print some bushings to put in the ends to protect the wiring.

Hoping my old pal Murphy leaves soon.

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The tube cutter leaves a bigger burr the tighter you crank on the handle between rotations so more turns the less burr also the sharper the blade in it.

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Just now dealing with this issue.