Stripping Teflon Wire

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kafka

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 7, 2006
Messages
77
Location
Maryland, USA
OK, this may be obvious to many of you, but after spending too much time on a simple project yesterday I finally figured it out.

Every time I go to work with teflon coated wire I regret it. The jacket is so tough, I always end up with imprecise strips, broken and mangled strands, etc. None of my old wire strippers have been any good on it. Furthermore, I always end up using too much wire because it's hard to hold it well enough to strip the jacket cleanly.

Well, recently I picked up a pair of "electrician's scissors" at Home Depot. The important feature of these w.r.t. teflon wire is that one of the blades is very finely serrated, so you can rotate it around the jacket and get a very precise strip.

So, that's it. Nothing important. Just the right tool for the job.
 
I have a bunch of teflon wire I never use for this very reason. I have known there was a specific tool required, yet not remembered to pick one up. [/i]
 
I use this :green:
200px-Fingernail_Clippers.jpg


But stripping short wire is a pain though (not easy to hold the wire)
 
For internal wiring I tend to use solid bus wire with teflon tubing cut to length.

But when I had to, I got pretty good using a wire stripper on the next smaller setting than the wire gauge and crunching through the teflon insulation to just touch the wire. Then transfer to the "correct" setting and pull the insulation off. It's not a perfect system but you can avoid losing strands, maybe just getting a couple of slight nicks.
 
When I used to do Mil spec stuff they had hot strippers. But if you have a regular stripper with the multiple gauge holes in it it should work fine on teflon. Remember there are metric and English strippers. And yes if you use a magnifying glass it will slightly nick the wire.
 
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/WS-150/WIRE-STRIPPER/-/1.html

http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/WS-150/WIRE-STRIPPER/-/1.html

i use those.
Those strippers are actually pretty high quality for as cheap as they are!
I never have much of a problem after doing so much on tube amps.
The key is to wrap the wire around your finger a bit, and then when you strip...cut in just a little and rotate the strippers about half turn...then the jacket pulls off nicely.
 
teflon doesnt melt or burn...(under normal circumstances at least)

just gets really hot and burns your da## finger when you hold it in place and wait for the solder to dry!
 
There used to be thermal strippers for Teflon that heated 2 wires
and you put the Teflon wire between them and pulled.
It would be fairly easy to make one but the fumes are allegedly deadly.

E
 
I'm glad you mentioned that---yes, the vapor (and decomposition products?) from teflon is quite nasty, so I would definitely have at least a fan pulling the air away and if possible work under a fume hood.

There's a bit of a brouhaha lately about the (very low) emission under even normal use from teflon-coated cookware, but I think the rate has got to be low if you keep to relatively low temperatures (perhaps our resident chemist could give some guidance here).

Apparently birds are especially sensitive: teflon poisoning
 
The FAA likes the thermal strippers, but there is a way to use non compliant strippers without violating the standard practice. :roll: cut the wire to length, slide the isulation off one end abit, cut the excess insulation off, and slide it back onto the wire leaving both ends exposed. The wire has to be free from the insulation for this method.
 
Those thermal strippers look great, but they're totally outside of my tool budget.

I've got some Nichrome wire around here. It gets unbelievably hot. I bet there's some way I could make a homemade desktop stripper out of it. I'm thinking that 2 pieces of wire, mounted on a jaw-like pivot with a spring, and a momentary switch that operates the power supply. You press the top jaw down, sandwiching the Teflon wire between the two pieces of Nichrome. The power supply goes on, and your wire is stripped.

What do you think? Got any suggestions on how to make something like this work?
 
Dear all,

I am looking for a wire stripper for aerospace activities. I was wondering if one of you know an other wire stipper to replace the No-Nik strippers (Which is no longer manufactured) ?

Thank you !  :D

Aymeric
 

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