Electronics - Heatshrink

This stuff is almost as good as PVC, and that other plastic stuff I recently discovered.

Heatshrink is way cool, because it can hide your personal lack of soldering skill.

And kids, we all know it's important to hide socially awkward things like skill deficits.

Heatshrink is a thing like the thing that was on wire before you mutilated it with wire strippers, and a soldering iron.

It's a bit like make-up, and a bit like a seat belt.

I'm not sure if I remember how it's a bit like make up, but it's a bit like a seat belt in so far as it can stop your house from burning down.

It looks something like this.

It's the black bits.

When you buy it, it looks like this.

All wrinkle free and smooth.

When you butcher a bit of soldering, you can hide it (except in profile) from the world with a small cutting of heatshrink.

Just cut off the appropriate length to cover all of your electronic inabilities, and you're one step closer to the prom.

A bit of heat sees the stuff shrink against the underlying wire!

Who'd have guessed?

The final product looks like this if you are unlucky.

And unskilled.

But the reality is, it's not just a cover up.

Being able to add a layer of insulation to whatever exposed wires you needed to create to make your project, makes for a totally worthwhile product.



It replaces bits of tape, and sometimes hope. And hope rarely does much to put out fires.

A truly wonderful product that I would be happy to gain profit from endorsing.

If only I knew what brand I use.


It really comes into it's own when you cram your vision onto a breadboard in any of the malformed ways that have become all to familiar to readers of this blog.

At least, when you use heat shrink, you know the problem is with your design rather than with some crazy bits of wire touching each other inappropriately.

Depicted here, a staged approximation of chaos on a breadboard, rendered happy by heatshrink.







Actually depicted there are some short lengths of wire soldered to even shorter lengths of header pin (stiff wire bits) that serve to make connecting stuff on a breadboard a dream.

But perhaps best of all, if you decide to spring for the $2.33 to buy a few* metres of heat shrink, and make some breadboard wires, you also get to learn some stuff about how solder flows, and get your soldering technique under control in a way that can more perfectly disguise your delinquent soldering misadventures.

It's soldering practice, but it has a purpose, and it will serve you well.

Make some breadboard wires with heatshrink today.


* hang on, isn't 233 a prime number that doesn't really divide well into a "few"?


120 Things in 20 years has some small burns since discovering heat shrink, but less than you might expect if you follow this blog closely.




















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