Where get heat shrink tape in UK?

Search for "Self Amalgamating Tape"

50m Roll 20mm wide 0.07mm thick 130 deg C shrink temp Stock Code 170-5403 £13.15

I doubt it as the principle is flawed.

Have you tried the type of heat shrink with the glue inside? That's what I use for the more demanding apps.

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    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
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Self amalgamating tape isn't sticky. But it's not really a substitute for heat shrink.

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*Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?*

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Glue-lined zipper heatshrink tubing. You open up the tubing, lay in the cables, zip the tubing shut and apply heat. Aftrwards, cut off the zipper along its length with a craft knife, to leave a round cable. Handy for all those time when you can't get a tube over the end (especially in the middle of a cable run, replacing a section of damaged cable..).

The result is a totally water and air-tight cable assembly - as the glue exudes out of the ends of the tube to make a perfect seal.

But rather over-kill for inside a PC. Spiral wrap is cheaper and more flexible - as it allows all the cables to be wrapped together, with cables exiting from the spiral wrap at intermediate points. It comes in a range or diameters.

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Sue

"Zip the tubing shut"? This sounds clever. Do you have a link to where this product is shown?

Just what I want.

It's not inside a PC but outside. For example, I have a mic cable which plugs into the PC. It has a joint which I have made and the cable gets moved a lot. Most of the PVC insulating tape I have seen starts to open up or even unravel under the repeated flexing. So I want to seal the insulating tape on the joint or to replace it entirely with something which canbe sealed and not need any further attention.

No it works, as posted 3 hours ago in Message-ID:

50m Roll 20mm wide 0.07mm thick 130 deg C shrink temp Stock Code 170-5403 £13.15

Just search for "zipper heat shrink tubing". I buy mine from my local electrical supplies company. It is used a lot to make permanent repairs to mid-sections of power cables.

Zipper tubing is *very* inflexible once set. Fine for inline repairs to cables that will not normally move but not for anything that you want to flex.

As others have said, self-amalgamating tape sounds like the answer. It will *not* unravel - as the stuff bonds to itself to make a solid covering. It will not open up.

If you cover the joint in hot-melt glue and, before the glue has hardened, wrap the joint with self-amalgamating tape, the result is almost as good as zipper tube. It can't be used for mains as the insulation thickness is uncertain (unlike zipper tube, which can be used for mains voltages and above). Be careful not to burn your fingers...

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Sue

Best thing is not to have a joint in a flexible cable. A suitable connector would be a better solution. The snag with heatshrink for this use is it's not flexible - so the cable flexes immediately before or after it and breaks. A proper connector will have a rubber gland which sort of spreads the length of the cable flexing.

The normal mic connector is of course the XLR - but this might be a bit big and heavy for this use - especially if the PC connector is the standard mini jack. If the mic and cable is getting a lot of movement, I'd fit an XLR chassis connector into a suitable instument box and weight or fix that down and run a cable from there to the PC - and plug the mic cable into the box. An XLR mic cable is designed to be flexed without damage.

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    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
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Simple lateral solution: Make a loop in the cable with the joint at its centre...

---------------------------. ----------\---------------------------- | / '--****--' **** = joint

... and put some big shrink-wrap tube over the lot.

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Mike Barnes

There are at least two shrink capacities in shrink wrap. You must have come across the version that shrinks (I'm out on a limb here, as I was not the user of this stuff) by so many percent and there was another that shrank twice as much. I can't give you any further info, other than it was used in the aerospace industry.

try this link

Dave

I think your best bet is the rubbery type self amalgamating tape. Careful application will produce a nice variable flexabilty strain relief. On the common 2 or 3 mm overall dia PC mic cables and even smaller cores getting the stuff on can be tricky. The problem is the tension, you need to stretch it to a good twice it's supplied length. You can get away with making a narrow strip say 1/2" wide and only and 1" or 2 long, stretching it then applying it. Most tension is required for the initial stretch, once streched it doesn't fully spring back so doesn't need as much tension to apply.

This stuff forms a very good seal and lasts donkeys years outside. I've taken it of N type aerial conections that have been roof top exposed for

bright and clean as the day I wrapped 'em up.

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Cheers                                              new5pam@howhill.com
Dave.                                             pam is missing e-mail

So use heat shrink TUBING.

It does exist, but is a specialist product, and some forms may even be 'special order' only. The clear version I have used, had a 'UV' activated adhesive, and you set the glue, before shrinking the tape. The problem is that most conventional adhesives, do not provide sufficient sheer strength to take the force that the shrinkage can produce. RS, do a version as part number 170-5403, which has a thermal welding property, which can work, but in all honesty, as a 'sealing' product, self amalgamating tape is better. Remember that the relative 'stiffness' of the heat shrink tape, makes it very hard to achieve a reliable lap, without leaving holes.

Best Wishes

Or if it won't fit over the connectors you could even use heat shrink TAPE.

Not really that specialist, its been available for at least 15 years from niche suppliers and around 5 years from mainstream distributors.

Really? Despite me posting that exact stock number, its dimensions, price and shrink temp 28 minutes after the original posting in this tread you seem to be the only other person on the planet that believes it even exists. Is news propogation that bad? Are RS really just taking the piss and listing a line that doesn't exist? Have I really not been using it for over 10 years?

Roger me senseless Baldrick, I must be going as mad as Dr Dribble.

Newsfeeds are by no means instantaneous. I had not seen your reply when I posted (it has appeared since, so 'yes' propogation _is_ that bad). You can reckon at times that a posting may take several hours to propogate round the world, and I have seen emails take over a fortnight (the classic one is where the email is beaten by the 'snail mail' package it relates to...). This is why it is particularly important to layout messages, so that people can see what you are replying to, and not assume that other people have seen exactly what you have seen (comment to top posters here, not you!... :-) If you re-read my reply, you will see that I say the tape, _may_ be specialist. The RS form, I do not believe to be that good, while the UV version I have used was only available in large order, from a specialist supplier. Hence my comment. The tapes do exist, but RS is one of the few 'end user' suppliers who do a form in small quantities.

Best Wishes

No RS just take the piss with the gawd awful web site.

They seem to have re-vamped it recently and it's even worse than before on my browser...

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    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.