Oh man, long time no post. Preparing for an exam, work and marriage slowed me down. Sleeving was my bottle-neck and consumed my last 3 weeks. I can not express how brobdingnagian (look it up) the task was. By the end things were going more smoothly, but most of the time it was brutal.
Imagine spending an hour trying to insert a single wire into its adapter counterpart. Burning your fingers over flames and hot plastic to shape it into place, only for the heat-shrink to burst... for the eighth time. It's your last of the adapter and when you finally get it in, another wire's sleeving pulls out of its heat-shrink. Pulling out wires like that cut my hands up like rope burn. The tips of my fingers thickened from the pressure of pushing the bulky wires in.
Windows 8 pre-order is what ultimately pushed me to finish the job. So all I've done is sleeved a power supply during this time. Waiting till now to post saves this from turning into a multi-page sleeving thread.
Opening the power supply:
The proximal side of the wires was the easiest to heat shrink. Exact measurements are unnecessary. Having said that, those green wires on the right were not heatshrinked close enough and some of the shrink was visible on the outside of the powersupply.
But the ends took time and craftsmanship, with attention to detail. This double wire was probably the worst one for me. It gave me trouble right when I started to think I had a hang of things, and it would curl up into a little bump that was just too big to fit into the square. I was like Happy Gilmore. Get in the Hole!!!
After an evening and another days attempt, here's what solved the problem. Worked for any tough insertion like a charm.
1. Taper technique. Hooked inside the power supply, for better grip onto the outer heatshrink and prevention of slippage out; the plastic adapter piece ends are tapered inwards, Lutro0 style. Except here's the catch, I clip off about 30% of the distal frays by about a mm or two. It's hard to see in the picture but it's less clean because of that.
When lighter-melted it has a tipped taper.
That wasn't enough. After a lot of tapering I came up with something even better.
Filing the inside wasn't enough.
Needle nose pliers turned out the best tool for the job. Ripping out the plastic separator between two difficult squares created plenty of room.
And then this happened:
Would you believe it happened removing the last wire I had to re-sleeve that required it?? Phew! Well at least until one of them needs re=sleeving, for whatever reason. I've already ordered from Germany twice for not ordering enough. Do NOT want to pay (or wait) for a third transatlantic order.
Another oopsy. Right between the sleeving.
When I pulled away the wires, my hand was glued to them. The outcome:
As I was saying, the remaining cords were different. Like the SATA Power cord:
Taken apart:
Sharpied the wires black where they would be visible.
Finally finished all of the power supply. I could barely fit all the wires out of the exit hole!
And a close up of the color scheme. I decided on a traditional complementary color to accent the theme. Just these two wires on the edge. The 24 pin will be red to emphasize the MDPC sleeving, and the majority of the smaller cables will be black to blend into the background.
Sorry for the poor lighting. Everytime I start its light outside, but by the end of a session it is dark and my measly floor lamp does not do the sleeving justice
Oh, and one more thing. I'm suspicious that I will have left over parts I might want to sell on here after I'm done. If you guys could rep me to allow that to happen, I would really appreciate it.
Edited by Roman736 - 10/20/12 at 7:57pm
