The elves at e14 and UPS were busy again, carrying my not-so-Secret Santa gift to my hardware inbox. I guess the secret part is, who will receive my suggested gift. Time will tell.
Unwrapping and holding the real hardware in hands is always exciting. Thanks to e14 and dychen for making this awesome idea happen and ntewinkel for suggesting the automatic wire stripper Jokari T20050. It is a very welcome addition to my workbench and replacing all other wire stripping actions, such as the use of side cutter, XACTO knife or melting the insulation away.
It has a wire clipping blade at the top end and nicely rounded handles, which are good to use with more pressure for thicker wires. The real business end is of course the front side with 2 V shaped blades attacking the inserted wire from 4 sides. A slider behind the blades acts as a wire stop to set the stripped length from 6 to 15mm. By squeezing the 2 arms of the slider it can easily adjusted.
It is advertised to strip wires from 0.2 mm (24 AWG) to 6 mm (10 AWG), so I started clipping everything I could find in my wire box. The thickest wire I could find was a 12 gauge stranded and it worked like a charm on this one. Everything down to 24 AWG was no problem to remove the insulation and expose the wires, no matter if solid core or stranded. Pushing the tool beyond its limits, I tried RG147 coax cable on the jacket and the inner conductor, no problem at all and it left the shield braid mostly intact. Multimeter wire with super thick silicone insulation, house installation wire, all no problem. I could even strip twin wires together with one motion, same for 2 overmolded separately insulted wires. First strip removed the overmold, second strip exposed the conductors of both wires together.Even a thin 26 gauge (stranded and solid) wire was no problem to strip, only at 28 AWG,it went right trough insulation and conductor. Here is the evidence of a delightful evening of stripper action.
My productivity leveled up significantly with this fun new tool. Thanks again to everybody for this very cool gift.
