Does anyone have a secret way to neatly strip ribbon wire (all at once) without a dedicated tool, or doing one conductor at a time.
I have tried cutting across both sides with a snap knife, bending back and forth, and pulling ... but some of the wires break off even though not cut through.
I even tried to soften the plastic with a heat gun.
Tough stuff that PVC.
Mark Henderson
tried using a soldering iron as a "knife" to cut the isolation from both si des?
-Lasse
** One of these does a nice job, and is not DEDICATED to ribbon wire.
Takes 13mm wide bites, you don't need all at once.
Look for a "T-Rex" wire stripper.
.... Phil
Tough it is. Any reason you can't use a standard ribbon cable terminator?
Need to solder certain wires together. Could use a PCB mount terminator, but would be extra work creating the wire links.
Mark Henderson
Just get a small butane torch and melt the PVC, a thermoplastic. (torch $7 at Harbor Fright.) Just watch the PVC carefully, playing the flame back and forth constantly, and it will soften and get very easy to handle. Your hea t gun too diffuse and not hot enough. A piece of green scotch pad scrub pa d good for grabbing it, or a rough wash cloth/ shop towel, or a rough leath er welder glove. When it gets soft, you are dealing with maple syrup-taffy, and you need a tough and rough grabber to get rid of it. (also to insulate your skin from it. It is very dangerous to work with, because it will adhe re to your skin when hot. So the leather welder glove (again HF $2) a good idea. Put it on your right (dominant hand.) Hold ribbon in your left hand. Play torch right hand. Put torch down and point away. Grab goo with your gl oved right hand. ) DANGER!
I found it helps to score across the plastic on both sides with a snap kife before using the jaw-type stripper.
Mark Henderson
Those are well-known to RIP small wire to shreds. UN-buy and invest the money more profitably in door-to-door dehydrated water sales.
"Robert Baer= lunatic troll "
** Lucky the topic is *ribbon cable* - eh ??FYI:
F*ck off, you demented, moronic troll.
On a sunny day (Mon, 03 Feb 2014 18:58:57 -0800) it happened Robert Baer wrote in :
On top of that, I use ribbon wire a lot to make connections:
Even then, compare the labor of simply crimping the ribbon connectors on plus making up jumpers on a PC board or behind the header for the ribbon cable connection, to having to strip and fiddle around with every ribbon cable conductor.
Mark - we might be able to help. We have a special ribbon cable stripper machine. Chris
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