How to organize heat shrink tubing?

Put it in the oven for a while. That will make it smaller and much easier to store.

John

Sno-o-o-o-ort! Fortunately I had completely swallowed my coffee before I read that... otherwise I'd be changing keyboards AGAIN ;-)

...Jim Thompson

You might have to make a decision: do you want them sorted by size, or by color? Then, once you've decided, then you can go to either colors within a size group or sizes within a color group. I've even seen bins of heat-shrink where each color was a different size. (Or each size was a different color, I'm not sure how they catalogued them.)

As far as storage, get a box with multiple chambers, like an egg- crate separator or so, and just stack them up. Or you could save a bunch of paper towel tubes and tape them together to hold your bundles of tubing.

Good Luck! Rich

Mailing tubes, cut to various lengths. I prefer six inch intervals. Anything between tube lengths goes in the next shorter length. Look in the short tubes first, and work your way up so you don't have dozens of short pieces of the same type and color. Its worked ell for me, for over a decade.

Well, the big supply goes in the closet and you shut the door. A small supply lives next to the soldering station, tucked into a tasteful tall vase (well, actually mine is in a lab-surplus graduated cylinder...). A second small supply lives in a ziploc bag in the tool box.

When a vase-resident stem gets too short, that piece is retired to the ziploc bag.

Keep only what you need and sell the rest in eBay.

Ken Torrey Hills Technologies, LLC.

Sort by size...

No, wait:

Sort by size first, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by type first, then size, then color...

No, wait:

Sort by color, then size, then type.

No, wait:

throw them all in a cabinet and jsut grab what you need when you need it. Works for me.

Admittedly, the last time I saw heatshrink organized _at all_ was at the local electronics store. :-)

Cheers! Rich [I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek with my answer, but I guess my humour isn't as funny to other people as it is to me. )-; ]

A row of nails along a shelf edge, or other convenient woodwork, with bundles of the tubing suspended from them by loops of elastic bands. Easy to reach out and grab what you want.

Save even more space by putting the smaller tubing inside the larger tubing.

Leon

Exactly the system I use! I used PVC pipe with PVC endcaps.

I don't think I ever mentioned this before, but I should have. I for one really appreciate what you have done for our country. Thank you.

Me too. Hear Hear.

There are not only different colors of shrink tubing, there are different types as well.

There are types that have heat activated adhesives inside, and there are dual layer High Voltage types... the list goes on.

If you are sure that they are all of the same type, you need not pre-classify them by type. Size is all you need. Even with the different colors for a given size in the same "bin", you will find that choosing the right piece needed based on size is easy, and choosing the right color is a decision you make before you even approach the lot.

If they are, however, of different types as well, the problem magnifies, because without them having been marked as to type, it will not be easy for someone not using them constantly to tell one type from another, unless you are a person that pays attention to such details all the time.

Hi John - though a valid suggestion - After the ovening, I would still be left with the problem of having lots of long tubing to organize - so I think the problem at topic would still persist.

-Michael

Heat the tubing first. The storage room needed will be a lot less.

Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?

John

If you really did this, the heat-shrink would already be shrunk, and so it wouldn't be any use as heat-shrink again. Albeit, hot heatshrink is pretty limp and plastic, so could conceivably be used in lieu of spaghetti tubing, but I believe that John has merely been having a bit of fun with us here. :-)

Cheers! Rich

I think it was a serious suggestion. There was nothing in the requirements about having to use it for anything.. just storage.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Come on! Michael and I can't be the _only_ vets who frequent this NG, can we?

(I have a 214 on record somewhere, and two, count'em, two Honorable Discharges - I got out in '72, but then re-upped for the bennies. ;-) )

Thanks, Rich