Tiny butt splices?

TwoBlocked

TwoBlocked

Senior Member
Location
Bradford County, PA
Occupation
Industrial Electrician
Have an ongoing repair job where some PVC had to be cut to allow heavy machinery access into a outdoor containment area. The conduit contains a dozen or so 4 conductor, 18 ga instrumentation cables. Without going into detail, there will be enough slack and enough room in a trough for splicing. Am looking for very small gauge, uninsulated butt splices. The idea is to stagger the splices and seal with heat shrink tubing.

Any suggestions for very small, uninsulated butt splices?
 
You might also consider heat shrink solder connectors:
1731072144769.jpeg
The solder might improve conductivity of the splice if these are finicky instrumentation conductors.
 
Here's an actual ul listed industrial grade product from a trusted manufacturer. Ive used thousands of these along with adhesive lined heatshrink.

Panduit BS18-M
 
I concur with 'UL listed industrial product'. You don't want to go with ill defined Amazon cheap for this.

IMHO for low voltage signals a 'UL listing' isn't the important part, but having a datasheet from a reputable manufacturer is critical.

Then make sure your use matches the datasheet.

You don't want your instrumentation folk to be chasing gremlins every time it rains.

How much space and length do you have for your splices? How essential is 'tiny' in your description, or are you referring to the wire size?

-Jonathan
 
hbiss said:
No good for 18ga and anything stranded. Only 22-24ga solid.

-Hal
Click to expand...
True, I used them when I worked for Hinkle & McCoy on phone work when we actually wired for phone.
 
winnie said:
I concur with 'UL listed industrial product'. You don't want to go with ill defined Amazon cheap for this.

IMHO for low voltage signals a 'UL listing' isn't the important part, but having a datasheet from a reputable manufacturer is critical.

Then make sure your use matches the datasheet.

You don't want your instrumentation folk to be chasing gremlins every time it rains.

How much space and length do you have for your splices? How essential is 'tiny' in your description, or are you referring to the wire size?

-Jonathan
Click to expand...
The UL listing is (allegedly) giving you a 3rd party verification that the part is correctly manufactured with the right materials and will perform as stated in the spec sheet. Non listed random chinese crimps could be made of who know what mystery metal and could be prone to cracking or corrosion.
 
Yes, I forgot to add that Amazon is often a good source of reputable products from reputable manufacturers.

It is also a good source of perfectly fine products from non-reputable manufacturers, which I will happily use in areas where it really doesn't matter.

It is also a 'good' source of shoddy and counterfeit products. You have to be careful.
 
Thanks for all the responses! The splices will be inside a PVC trough, about 20 cables each, in 4 different locations. If at all possible I want to put heat shrink over the entire splice to make a water tight seal from the sheath of one cable to the next. That's why I am considering uninsulated butt connectors that I would then stagger so they do not touch each other, and I can get the heat shrink over it all. I'll use spaghetti tubing over the bare drain wire. There might be a slooooow moving 4-20 signal at most in the cables, So I'm not concerned about interference.

The 18-20 ga ones of these look good, but did want you fine folk's opinions. There's 4 places the splices will need to be made, so any ideas where I can get these in bulk instead of in an assortment?

1731091251210.png
 
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McMaster-Carr

McMaster-Carr is the complete source for your plant with over 595,000 products. 98% of products ordered ship from stock and deliver same or next day.
www.mcmaster.com www.mcmaster.com
 
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