How to shrink heat shrink tubing?

Try a military Radio & TV station (AFRTS) where nothing was documented. After 20& years of equipment being moved around or replaced, it was a nightmare. I had the master monitor fail one night, but couldn't disconnect it, because the main transmitter was at the end of that loop. They had a nice set of Grass Valley video DAs, but only used one of the four outputs on each. Add to that, some video connectors were BNC, and others were PL-259 since the station was built during the time manufacturers used both.

I got fed up with intermittent cables, so one Saturday I ran a temporary cable from the film chain strait to the transmitter and started pulling out dead cables. The 12" * 18" cable tray was full when I started. When I finished, the bundle was under 6" and several thousand feet of dead cable were laying in the corner of the transmitter & control room. That master monitor had seven pieces of coax between it and the video switcher. There was over 100 abandoned cables I pulled out. Most had one bad connector, and some had both bad. The other engineer walked in and almost fainted, but I had everything in place in time for or noon newscast, and finished everything else before my 20 hour shift ended.

They had the audio board fail in the TV control room at one time, so they extended all the lines to the radio station's audio console and used the preview output to feed the TV transmitter. When they got the board back from the AFRTS service depot, they left the extra wire connected. You could see radio station's the AM modulation in the video baseband, from the ground loop that mess caused.

Just be glad it was run above the ceiling, under a metal roof. It was rarely comfortable up there, It was either below zero, or in the 90+ degree range.

Digital? We were B&W, and the only ICs were RTL. (Resistor-Transistor-Logic) ;-)

I built a mobile production van for WACX in the late '80s. I used about 50 feet of clear heat shrink. :(

Not me. The VA has decided that I'll never work again, and it drives me crazy. :(

That all sounds kinda familiar, somehow... And yeah, those PL-259 video connectors kept unscrewing themselves. First place to look, for a bad ground connection, especially if somebody had screwed a BNC adapter onto it. I've been in this line of work for about 30 years, so I've seen a few of those. Sometimes you'd see adapters on adapters. I called that a "Stack-o-dapters".

Well, this thread is getting a little long and off-topic. I'll sign off here.

Well, the other day I got a new heat gun... Tried it out today, had this nice dial on the end to set your heat, everything looked nice.

Plugged it in, turned it on, and dialed the heat up and "POP" was what I heard! oops.

Testing showed me that it was putting out about enough heat to warm my hand if I held it about four inches from the outlet!

Crap, I hate fixing new stuff, but took it apart, and the SCR in the dial mechanism had a bad solder joint. New... Of course, chinese crap made, and I did fix it.

I make a point of never buying crap tools - it simply isn't worth it. Got quite a few Chinese made which are very good - and incredible value.

If I did buy one which didn't work I'd take it back for a refund or exchange.

Good for you! :)

Agreed, but it was something I picked up from a store that was going out of business... It sat in the box for a while, and I decided to try it yesterday.

A cheap and easy way is to buy a hair dryer from one of the thrift shops

- probably cost you a $1 or so, and does the job.

David

I haven't tried it, but I reckon you could get an old pair of pliers - heat em up on the stove then gently grip the heat shrink with the hot jaws - might be worth a try

David

You can buy small butane-powered torches, with a variety of tips. The one I bought has a flame tip, a catalytic-heater soldering tip, and a catalytic-heater hot-air jet. The latter works very well for doing small heat-shrinking jobs - with the torch turned down to minimum gas flow it produces a rather delicate and controllable jet of hot air which can heat the tubing without roasting things nearby.