Thu Jan 29 2009

New tools

Today I received the wire strippers I purchased in an e-Bay auction. They were crazy expensive, but even so, I got this one and the next one for less than the cost of a single new pair, so I was pretty happy. Why are these so expensive? It's because the dies are made for Teflon (or Tefzel) insulated wire. That insulation tends to shred or leave little stringy bits when using regular wire strippers, so these stripper dies are designed to avoid that problem and still strip the wire without damaging the conductors at all. This one strips 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 and 26 gage wires...

while this one does 10, 12, and 14 gage wire sizes.

I also received a couple more boxes of the good powder free latex gloves. The last few pair of gloves were used up in the powder coating removal process, so I needed some more. I bought these online from Cole Parmer.