Insulation ON or OFF?

the machine doesnt tend to work well on braided wire (those copper fibers go everywhere and the wire breaks and has to be reset into that manual machine). i own one and i can only use it effectively for solid core wire. SO... my braided gets sold as is, and solid core will all be stripped

Originally Posted by Filthy

the machine doesnt tend to work well on braided wire (those copper fibers go everywhere and the wire breaks and has to be reset into that manual machine). i own one and i can only use it effectively for solid core wire. SO... my braided gets sold as is, and solid core will all be stripped

That's what I thought when I first used it. The key is to set the blade deep enough to cut the insulation and be easy to pull apart, but not so deep it catches the wire and causes problems. Another tip is to use your hand to hold the wire low on the incoming side, so it doesn't ride up into the blade.

I use the "wire zipper" which is very similar to the one listed above. http://www.thewirezipper.com/ The nice thing about it is you can manually apply pressure and get a "feel" for when you are cutting through insulation vs. the strands. After a while, you can get very good at adjusting the amount of pressure from the cutting wheel so that you only score the insulation, nothing else. Now, no wire is safe from me, including stranded.

Originally Posted by jonnyjeb

I use the "wire zipper" which is very similar to the one listed above. http://www.thewirezipper.com/

Cheers for the reply JJ, i did go onto the site but the video link kept on crashing Firefox?

Originally Posted by jonnyjeb

The nice thing about it is you can manually apply pressure and get a "feel" for when you are cutting through insulation vs. the strands. After a while, you can get very good at adjusting the amount of pressure from the cutting wheel so that you only score the insulation, nothing else.

Yes i appreciate what you are saying mate.

Originally Posted by jonnyjeb

Now, no wire is safe from me, including stranded.

Ahh the stranded stuff is what you call the very thin cable, ie from toasters, power cables, and the like, am i correct?

Be Lucky

yes, any appliance cord that plugs into a wall socket I find to be stranded all the time.

Originally Posted by jonnyjeb

yes, any appliance cord that plugs into a wall socket I find to be stranded all the time.

Cheers for that JJ,
thats saved me a lot of headache on research, and also not having to make a detailed post (which i would imagine has been posted many times) .
cheers
Be Lucky