Soldato
Cable braiding tutorial
I don't claim to be the best cable braider in the world, however I offered to email a guide which then got requested by many so I thought I would make a full tutorial on how to do it. This tutorial is a mix of the information provided by mdpc-x when you order, information provided by joxang and what I figured out when I braided some cable. My aim of this tutorial is to show you exactly how to braid with pictures and little diagrams showing what should be happening. In this tutorial I am using some mdpc-x sleeving and will be braiding an extension cable, however this tutorial can be applied to also braiding a full psu.
The first tip I will give it to read the whole tutorial before you begin so you know what to expect, though I have tried to write this a step by step guide you can also follow it as you go.
Deciding what braid to use
I have decided to add a little bit on what braid to choose as it was asked below. What braid looks best is completely subjective to the individual. Braid varies in density from low through to high and everything in the middle, low density weave braid will show the colour of the wire underneath through clearly as it looks more like a mesh over the wires, examples of this are OEM braided psu cables. The other end of the spectrum is dense weave which will, if pulled tight to close the weave, almost completely block out the colour of the wire underneath - the exceptions to this is looking very closely or under bright light e.g. camera flash. As I said this is upto your personal taste, though I prefer the dense weave which is what I have used in this tutorial. Specifically I have used MDPC-X dense weave sleeving, though I understand pulse modding dense weave is good also though I have not personally used it. Past offering this advice on braid it is difficult to name places to buy it from as most of them count as competitors to OCUK, your local electrical shop may sell some and google is your friend also.
A little side note here as this annoys me (as does all what I consider false information being spread on the internet) I have seen it mentioned a lot about "MDPC-X sleeve is expensive" which at €7.95 per 10m it isn't exactly cheap, I have found it to be a competitive price against braid that I would consider as dense of a weave. The only problem I would say there is that you have to buy it in lengths of multiples of 10m whereas other places will sell it in 1m lengths. I say this, however if someone knows where to get dense weave braid similar to mdpc cheaper then either post it or trust message me and I will eat my own words and remove this message but as of this moment I stand by that mdpc-x sleeve is a quality dense weave braid that is competitively priced. Enough of sounding like a salesman for mdpc though lol.
As for braid size to use, thank you to G-Dubs for providing this
Heatshrink
A little information on heatshrink also. The two most vital things to consider when buying heat shrink is 1. Its size and 2. Its shrink ratio. The size of the heatshrink is important as it needs to be able to go over the braid and with regards to braiding sata data cables the plugs too. The shrink ratio is normally detailed as a figure to 1 ratio. For example this means that if you have 9mm heatshrink with a 3:1 ratio, when heated it will shrink down to 3mm. Remember the heat shrink is what holds the braid in place so it will need to be a tight fit once shrunk, if you make a mistake and get a heat shrink which shrinks too small if you shrink with a lower heat then it will slowly shrink allowing more control of how much it shrinks. If you are braiding your psu cables individually though, as a general rule you will need the heat shrink to be able to shrink down to around 1mm - 1.5mm depending on braid thickness.
What you will need
A cable to braid
Some braid
Heat shrink
Pin removal tool (I am using the one from mdpc) (Post #18 Joxang recommendation: "Two of the best ATX tools I've used are the ones you get from MDPC, and the Frozen CPU branded atx tool")
Ruler
Pen
Scissors
Heat source (Heat gun is best but a lighter will work, I preferred a bbq lighter as it is easier on the fingers)
Lighter (if using a heat gun)
Step 1 – Marking the cable
I found the best way to make sure to get the braid in the right place is to mark the cable where it enters the plug. This then allows you to line up the braid so it will be flush with the plug.
Step 2 – How to remove the pins
You will then need to place the pin removal tool into the end of the plug to push the pins on the side of the pins to be able to remove the cable. This image shows what you are trying to do, picture 1 is the pin as it is, picture 2 is with the tool in place. As it can be seen in the second pic, the tool pushes the pins in.
Step 3 – Removing the pins
This is where it gets a bit difficult. While holding the tool in place, with the same hand holding the plug use your other hand to pull out the cable. A few tips while doing this
1. Make sure that the pin removal tool stays straight onto the psu plug and pin
2. You may need to push the wire back into the psu plug to make sure you can depress the pins in the side completely
3. You may also need wiggle the wire a little to get it out but it shouldn't take too much force to actually pull the wire and pin out. This it the most critical part as if you pull too hard you can pull the the wire and pin apart.
You then need to do the same to the other end of the cable to get it the wire out completely.
Step 4 – Measuring braid length
You then need to get your braid and measure it against the two dots at each end of the cable that you drew on earlier. As previously pointed out, this should give your braid the length of the wire between the two plugs. Once you have done this it is best to melt the ends of the braid with the lighter to stop the end of the braid fraying.
Step 5 – Placing braid onto wire and first heat shrink
To get the braid over the plugs, the easiest way is to push the plug into the end of the braid, then holding the end that is over the cable push the braid onto the cable. This will expand the braid to move it over the plug, then letting go of the first end to let it slide down the cable. Then re holding of the wire side of the plug push up the braid again and letting go of the wire and braid. The best explanation of this is the 'caterpiller technique' to crawl the braid over the cable. I have already at this point cut the heat shrink, for this example I have cut the heat shrink to 15mm lengths. You will then need to slide the heat shrink over the plug and braid. Making sure the braid is held in place to the dot slide the heat shrink over the end of the braid but not past the uprights on the plug (it can be seen just to the right of the heat shrink in the second picture) I found through braiding that it is best to leave about a 1mm gap as it then makes it easier to get the pin back into the plug.
Step 6 – Shrinking the heat shrink
In this picture below you can see the heat shink already shrunk to the braid and pin. To do this a heat gun is best as it will not burn the heat shrink. However you can use a lighter to shrink the heat shrink. To make sure it doesn't melt, I found it best to move back and forth along the length of the heat shrink while rotating the wire to evenly shrink the heat shrink.
Step 7 – Adding heat shrink to the second end
In this step I have held the braid by the heat shrink and sliding my other hand up the braid to pull it tight. This is to close up the braid which will help to stop any colour bleed of the wire underneath. If at this point the braid passes the dot on this end of the cable then let it slide back until it on the mark. Without releasing the braid you will need to slide the heat shrink onto the end and into the same place as the other end of the cable. Then following steps 5 and 6 to get the heat shrink in place on this end of the cable. Once this is done you will have one braided cable.
Step 8 – Pins back into the plugs
You can now place the braided wire back into the plugs. I have seen it suggested that the freshly heat shrinked ends should be place into the plugs as it is still malleable enough to pushed in, however I found that I could leave it to fully cool before putting the wires back in place. It is also noteworthy at this point to not manipulate the wire too much while the heat shrink is still warm as it will not have a full hold on the braid. Now it must be remembered at this stage that the male pin on the wire goes into the female plug and the female pin into the male plug. I have taken this image, as I found some plugs will only allow the pins to be entered in one direction. As can be seen, the plug has two small cut outs which are for the uprights on the pins.
Once all wires have been braided and put back in place you will have a fully braided extension cable. In true blue peter style – here's one I made earlier.
Edit 04.06.2011.
As you can see in the above picture of the finished braid, the heat shrink isn't lined up. For the truely professional braid the heat shrink should all be the same length and lined up. When I did the 24 pin cable above I had not seen to much information on how to line the heat shrink up much above trial and error. I have since seen a tutorial on how to do this but it involves taking the wire out to measure the braid, putting back in to line it up, then taking it out so on and so forth. Now while that is a valid way to do it I shall show you the way I found the easiest and simpleist way to do it.
Taking the first wire you braid as your 'master copy' I marked up the tip of the pin and where the braid ends. I marked this on some masking tape as it sticks down so you don't need to worry about it moving later on, if you don't have any masking tape you could do it with a sheet of paper. Remember when marking that you will need to mark both male and female pin ends of the wire.
Skipping over measuring braid and cutting heat shrink etc. You have the braid on the wire and placing the heat shrink on the end of braid and pin roughly in the right place (step 5) then lining it up the mark you made earlier to make sure it is completely lined up. Make sure it is and move it if it is necessary to do so. You can then start to shrink the heat shrink down, when it is about 50% shrunk check it again against the measurement to make sure it hasn't moved and it shrinking in the correct position. Make any final adjustment and fully shrink the heat shrink.
Clip the pins back into the plugs et voila! braided wires with lined up heat shrink. You can see I have also done a third wire on this extension also and it lines up also.
In blue peter stype again, here is one I did earlier. All 24 pins done
Final notes
This technique works best for when you are braiding a wire with pins at either end as the heat shrink will shrink over plug and hold it in place. If you are braiding a full psu or just the end of a wire, you may be putting heat shrink onto a cable. Doing this directly onto the wire it is likely that the heat shrink will slip. The best way to stop this is to put some heat shrink directly onto the wire, then sliding the braid over this and then shrinking some further heat shrink over this clamping the braid to the wire.
MDPC suggest that if you are using a white or yellow braid, and this will apply to either braid you buy, to use a white or yellow wire under the braid. The reason for this is that the colour of the wire will influence the colour of the braid and you are also able to see the colour of the wire through the small gaps in the braid. However if the braid is pulled tight to close up the braid, then from any distance above about 30 cm it isn't possible to see the colour of the wire and anything but strong direct light the braid will appear normal colour.
And finally … take your time with braiding. Braiding isn't the easiest thing to do however with practice and repetition then you can have perfect braided cables. As visbile by the green braid and heat shrink done in this tutorial being a lot neater than my first braids on the blue and white 24 pin.
I don't think I have missed anything from this guide, however if you think I have please mention it and I will add it into this tutorial. I plan on braiding some sata cables also, so I will add a small tutorial for this too to show any differences in wire and sata braiding.
I don't claim to be the best cable braider in the world, however I offered to email a guide which then got requested by many so I thought I would make a full tutorial on how to do it. This tutorial is a mix of the information provided by mdpc-x when you order, information provided by joxang and what I figured out when I braided some cable. My aim of this tutorial is to show you exactly how to braid with pictures and little diagrams showing what should be happening. In this tutorial I am using some mdpc-x sleeving and will be braiding an extension cable, however this tutorial can be applied to also braiding a full psu.
The first tip I will give it to read the whole tutorial before you begin so you know what to expect, though I have tried to write this a step by step guide you can also follow it as you go.
Deciding what braid to use
I have decided to add a little bit on what braid to choose as it was asked below. What braid looks best is completely subjective to the individual. Braid varies in density from low through to high and everything in the middle, low density weave braid will show the colour of the wire underneath through clearly as it looks more like a mesh over the wires, examples of this are OEM braided psu cables. The other end of the spectrum is dense weave which will, if pulled tight to close the weave, almost completely block out the colour of the wire underneath - the exceptions to this is looking very closely or under bright light e.g. camera flash. As I said this is upto your personal taste, though I prefer the dense weave which is what I have used in this tutorial. Specifically I have used MDPC-X dense weave sleeving, though I understand pulse modding dense weave is good also though I have not personally used it. Past offering this advice on braid it is difficult to name places to buy it from as most of them count as competitors to OCUK, your local electrical shop may sell some and google is your friend also.
A little side note here as this annoys me (as does all what I consider false information being spread on the internet) I have seen it mentioned a lot about "MDPC-X sleeve is expensive" which at €7.95 per 10m it isn't exactly cheap, I have found it to be a competitive price against braid that I would consider as dense of a weave. The only problem I would say there is that you have to buy it in lengths of multiples of 10m whereas other places will sell it in 1m lengths. I say this, however if someone knows where to get dense weave braid similar to mdpc cheaper then either post it or trust message me and I will eat my own words and remove this message but as of this moment I stand by that mdpc-x sleeve is a quality dense weave braid that is competitively priced. Enough of sounding like a salesman for mdpc though lol.
As for braid size to use, thank you to G-Dubs for providing this
Heatshrink
A little information on heatshrink also. The two most vital things to consider when buying heat shrink is 1. Its size and 2. Its shrink ratio. The size of the heatshrink is important as it needs to be able to go over the braid and with regards to braiding sata data cables the plugs too. The shrink ratio is normally detailed as a figure to 1 ratio. For example this means that if you have 9mm heatshrink with a 3:1 ratio, when heated it will shrink down to 3mm. Remember the heat shrink is what holds the braid in place so it will need to be a tight fit once shrunk, if you make a mistake and get a heat shrink which shrinks too small if you shrink with a lower heat then it will slowly shrink allowing more control of how much it shrinks. If you are braiding your psu cables individually though, as a general rule you will need the heat shrink to be able to shrink down to around 1mm - 1.5mm depending on braid thickness.
What you will need
A cable to braid
Some braid
Heat shrink
Pin removal tool (I am using the one from mdpc) (Post #18 Joxang recommendation: "Two of the best ATX tools I've used are the ones you get from MDPC, and the Frozen CPU branded atx tool")
Ruler
Pen
Scissors
Heat source (Heat gun is best but a lighter will work, I preferred a bbq lighter as it is easier on the fingers)
Lighter (if using a heat gun)
Step 1 – Marking the cable
I found the best way to make sure to get the braid in the right place is to mark the cable where it enters the plug. This then allows you to line up the braid so it will be flush with the plug.
Step 2 – How to remove the pins
You will then need to place the pin removal tool into the end of the plug to push the pins on the side of the pins to be able to remove the cable. This image shows what you are trying to do, picture 1 is the pin as it is, picture 2 is with the tool in place. As it can be seen in the second pic, the tool pushes the pins in.
Step 3 – Removing the pins
This is where it gets a bit difficult. While holding the tool in place, with the same hand holding the plug use your other hand to pull out the cable. A few tips while doing this
1. Make sure that the pin removal tool stays straight onto the psu plug and pin
2. You may need to push the wire back into the psu plug to make sure you can depress the pins in the side completely
3. You may also need wiggle the wire a little to get it out but it shouldn't take too much force to actually pull the wire and pin out. This it the most critical part as if you pull too hard you can pull the the wire and pin apart.
You then need to do the same to the other end of the cable to get it the wire out completely.
Step 4 – Measuring braid length
You then need to get your braid and measure it against the two dots at each end of the cable that you drew on earlier. As previously pointed out, this should give your braid the length of the wire between the two plugs. Once you have done this it is best to melt the ends of the braid with the lighter to stop the end of the braid fraying.
Step 5 – Placing braid onto wire and first heat shrink
To get the braid over the plugs, the easiest way is to push the plug into the end of the braid, then holding the end that is over the cable push the braid onto the cable. This will expand the braid to move it over the plug, then letting go of the first end to let it slide down the cable. Then re holding of the wire side of the plug push up the braid again and letting go of the wire and braid. The best explanation of this is the 'caterpiller technique' to crawl the braid over the cable. I have already at this point cut the heat shrink, for this example I have cut the heat shrink to 15mm lengths. You will then need to slide the heat shrink over the plug and braid. Making sure the braid is held in place to the dot slide the heat shrink over the end of the braid but not past the uprights on the plug (it can be seen just to the right of the heat shrink in the second picture) I found through braiding that it is best to leave about a 1mm gap as it then makes it easier to get the pin back into the plug.
Step 6 – Shrinking the heat shrink
In this picture below you can see the heat shink already shrunk to the braid and pin. To do this a heat gun is best as it will not burn the heat shrink. However you can use a lighter to shrink the heat shrink. To make sure it doesn't melt, I found it best to move back and forth along the length of the heat shrink while rotating the wire to evenly shrink the heat shrink.
Step 7 – Adding heat shrink to the second end
In this step I have held the braid by the heat shrink and sliding my other hand up the braid to pull it tight. This is to close up the braid which will help to stop any colour bleed of the wire underneath. If at this point the braid passes the dot on this end of the cable then let it slide back until it on the mark. Without releasing the braid you will need to slide the heat shrink onto the end and into the same place as the other end of the cable. Then following steps 5 and 6 to get the heat shrink in place on this end of the cable. Once this is done you will have one braided cable.
Step 8 – Pins back into the plugs
You can now place the braided wire back into the plugs. I have seen it suggested that the freshly heat shrinked ends should be place into the plugs as it is still malleable enough to pushed in, however I found that I could leave it to fully cool before putting the wires back in place. It is also noteworthy at this point to not manipulate the wire too much while the heat shrink is still warm as it will not have a full hold on the braid. Now it must be remembered at this stage that the male pin on the wire goes into the female plug and the female pin into the male plug. I have taken this image, as I found some plugs will only allow the pins to be entered in one direction. As can be seen, the plug has two small cut outs which are for the uprights on the pins.
Once all wires have been braided and put back in place you will have a fully braided extension cable. In true blue peter style – here's one I made earlier.
Edit 04.06.2011.
As you can see in the above picture of the finished braid, the heat shrink isn't lined up. For the truely professional braid the heat shrink should all be the same length and lined up. When I did the 24 pin cable above I had not seen to much information on how to line the heat shrink up much above trial and error. I have since seen a tutorial on how to do this but it involves taking the wire out to measure the braid, putting back in to line it up, then taking it out so on and so forth. Now while that is a valid way to do it I shall show you the way I found the easiest and simpleist way to do it.
Taking the first wire you braid as your 'master copy' I marked up the tip of the pin and where the braid ends. I marked this on some masking tape as it sticks down so you don't need to worry about it moving later on, if you don't have any masking tape you could do it with a sheet of paper. Remember when marking that you will need to mark both male and female pin ends of the wire.
Skipping over measuring braid and cutting heat shrink etc. You have the braid on the wire and placing the heat shrink on the end of braid and pin roughly in the right place (step 5) then lining it up the mark you made earlier to make sure it is completely lined up. Make sure it is and move it if it is necessary to do so. You can then start to shrink the heat shrink down, when it is about 50% shrunk check it again against the measurement to make sure it hasn't moved and it shrinking in the correct position. Make any final adjustment and fully shrink the heat shrink.
Clip the pins back into the plugs et voila! braided wires with lined up heat shrink. You can see I have also done a third wire on this extension also and it lines up also.
In blue peter stype again, here is one I did earlier. All 24 pins done
Final notes
This technique works best for when you are braiding a wire with pins at either end as the heat shrink will shrink over plug and hold it in place. If you are braiding a full psu or just the end of a wire, you may be putting heat shrink onto a cable. Doing this directly onto the wire it is likely that the heat shrink will slip. The best way to stop this is to put some heat shrink directly onto the wire, then sliding the braid over this and then shrinking some further heat shrink over this clamping the braid to the wire.
MDPC suggest that if you are using a white or yellow braid, and this will apply to either braid you buy, to use a white or yellow wire under the braid. The reason for this is that the colour of the wire will influence the colour of the braid and you are also able to see the colour of the wire through the small gaps in the braid. However if the braid is pulled tight to close up the braid, then from any distance above about 30 cm it isn't possible to see the colour of the wire and anything but strong direct light the braid will appear normal colour.
And finally … take your time with braiding. Braiding isn't the easiest thing to do however with practice and repetition then you can have perfect braided cables. As visbile by the green braid and heat shrink done in this tutorial being a lot neater than my first braids on the blue and white 24 pin.
I don't think I have missed anything from this guide, however if you think I have please mention it and I will add it into this tutorial. I plan on braiding some sata cables also, so I will add a small tutorial for this too to show any differences in wire and sata braiding.
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