 takatatakatakatakatakatak It's Chips, millionaire tip Chips, Chips, I have no music And I can't sing Greetings Chip friends Today I'm gonna talk about wire stripping So, here is my breadboard And in order to hook everything up I need lots and lots of wires And I made some wires here But that's not nearly enough I'm gonna need probably ten times that, or twenty times that maybe to put together my entire circuit. Let's talk about wire stripping. These are all the different wires that I use for my breadboard. They're all the same size. They're all 22 gauge, and I have them in different colors, which is nice. The problem is that now I need to cut them to length and strip them. So I had, since I've been in college, I've had this manual set of wire strippers set. Well, this manual wire stripper, which, let's see, it says K Miller Tool Company. Anyway, it's a really, really simple base model. The only adjustment that you get is the screw, which adjusts how thick the wire or the insulation that you're going to cut will be. It doesn't even have a spring, which means that you have to basically hold it with your fingers like this. And I got used to using it, so I can simply strip a wire very simply, just like that. The problem is, of course, that when I cut a small wire and then I attempt to strip it, I have to really hold onto it quite well. But you know, this works, and I've been using it for longer than I want to say on YouTube, so I'm pretty adept at it. So then, as I was perusing YouTube, as you do, I saw somebody using this thing. This is this sort of a cheap looking wire stripper. Some of it's metal, a lot of it's plastic. And basically, the action is you put the wire in and you're supposed to squeeze, and this part is supposed to hold onto the wire, or rather, this part is supposed to hold onto the wire. Insulation and the blade inside basically closes on the insulation and then pulls back, and then you're supposed to release it, and there your wire is stripped. So let's try that. And look at that. It didn't work. How amazing. It's got this adjustment on the back. Apparently, nobody knows what it's for. So this is pretty much useless. I hate it, and it doesn't work. Then when I was at a SWAT meet, I found this. This is a very old school sort of wire stripper. It works pretty well. The action is approximately the same. So the blade is over here and the wire holder is over here. And the idea is that you put the wire over here, and you close it, and then these two have sort of pull away from each other in order to strip the insulation. And then there's this other action that happens when you release it where the blade opens and releases. So the problem though is that this blade has different sections for different wire gauges, which is unfortunate because now you have to sort of look at it and you have to say, okay, well, I've got 22 gauge, so I'm just going to stick my wire into the 22 gauge one. Oh no, I missed it. Now I have to move over one. Okay, now I'm carefully closing it so that the wire doesn't hop into another wire gauge. And then I pull it and it does work. It's just a lot of work to get it into the right hole. So I don't really like this very much, even though it's extremely solid, it's well built. Of course, that means that it was probably made 30 or 40 years ago or something. This one is called Strip Master, and it's ideal. So then again, as I was perusing YouTube, and the link to this video is down below because I think it's very informative and very well done, is the Knipex. It's a German tool company. They make all sorts of tools, but this one is completely made out of plastic. However, the action is extremely smooth. It's got two parts to it. One is a wire cutter over here. There's a blade over here, and the other is the actual wire stripper. Now, if you look at the blade, if you can see it maybe, the blade is actually sort of a notch shape. So you don't have to worry about choosing the right diameter of the part of the cutter. So to cut a wire, you just do that, and I didn't even feel the wire. The action is so smooth. And then this part over here is a gauge or a stop to let you cut insulation off of the same length. And then all you have to do is you take your wire and you just stick it in where the notch is, and then you just pull, and you're done. And that was very, very easily done. And I can cut the wire and do it again. Perfect cut every single time. Very, very quick to do. So I really, really like this tool, and I highly recommend it. It's the Knipex 1262-180, and again, I'll put a link to it down below. So one of the problems that I've always had with the manual strippers is how to cut these really tiny power jumpers. So you see a lot of them like over here is a power jumper. Here's a ground jumper. So basically small jumpers. How do I make those? So what I would do, what I would do sometimes is I would cut the wire off of one end, and then I would leave a bit like, say, an inch, which is two and a half centimeters when it's at home. And then I would cut it off. And then, of course, when I try to cut the other end off, one of two things, well, one of three things would happen. One, it would work perfectly. Two, I would squeeze on the insulation and then pull on this wire and nothing would happen. Or three, I would pull on the insulation and the entire insulation would just come off the wire. So I sort of developed this kind of a dumb technique, but I mean, it kind of works, where I strip off the wire on one end, and then I strip it off again to give me double the wire length, and then I cut the wire. And then because of the way, because of the shortness of the insulation, I can just pull on the insulation, he said, as he couldn't actually do it. Okay. And sometimes it would work where I would pull on the insulation and pull the insulation to halfway so that I would have a wire. So what I would like to do is do that with the Kinebex, make a small jumper. So really, all I have to do is cut off one end, cut off the other end, just like that. And then just put this in. And there you go, a tiny little jumper. So this works really great for even small wires. I wonder how small I can go. So here I'm going to cut a red wire, and then I'm going to cut it off quite small. That's about half the exposed wire. So now I'm going to put it in here, and I can barely put it in. Okay. And the idea is that it's this front part that's holding onto the wire, basically squeezing the insulation onto the wire in order to grip the wire, and then pulling the insulation off. Let's see what happens. It actually worked. How about that? That's really awesome. So you can make some really, really tiny jumpers that can fit between the 0.1 inch spacing over here. So that's really awesome. Okay. So that's one part of the video. The second part of the video that I wanted to do is, because this is so utterly useless, I would like to tear it apart. Because first of all, apparently nobody knows what this knob does. It's supposed to be for adjusting the amount of strength that, possibly, that grips the wire. Oh, I didn't actually realize that there was a wire cutter over here. I wonder how bad that is. Let's see. Wow, that action was kind of crunchy. It's crunchy because there's actually a very palpable amount of force that you have to use to get the mechanism to start. So yeah, that's really crunchy, and I don't like it at all. Okay. So anyway, what I would like to do is open this up. Now the problem is that there are four rivets. There are no screws at all. Here is a circlip, and the circlip can be removed simply by abusing it with some force. So let's abuse the circlip by just pulling on it. Okay. So what has loosened up? Probably nothing. Well, the central part can now come out, and let's see what I'm going to do. I'm going to take my wire strippers and pull on that. Don't judge me. Okay. I also use my wire strippers to remove the end pegs from these tubes because they're kind of hard to remove as well. So anyway, okay. So I've removed that central thing. Okay. Now this is actually loose and moving. So the real question is, can I remove it? So maybe I can hold on to the spring and then just pull this out or push it out. Yes. Okay. So a piece came out. It looks like just some sort of a roller of some kind or a dowel pin, and I can just push this out that way. All right. So that's the one part. Okay. There is actually a screw over here. So it looks like I can take maybe this central part out. So let's take that screw off and see what happens. All right. Okay. So there are the two parts of the blade. So here's this blade over here that fits onto here, and that's the cutting action. So I'm going to simply remove that. This other blade seems to be wedged pretty firmly in here on this other side. I can remove it by forcing it with the screwdriver of knowledge. So that's that. So this is, it looks like basically a single molded piece with what appears to be, I'm not sure what that is, but there's this black piece that's embedded into it. I suspect that kind of feels like metal. See if I can pry it out. Oh, I don't think it's going to give up its secrets that easily, but that's okay. So here's the second part of this, and basically it's a spring-loaded kind of blade with this stopper that can move back and forth, and that's pretty much all about that. So now the mystery part is this right here. Now it's actually loose now, and if I look inside here, I see kind of a red piece that can actually move, but it doesn't seem to have any connection to this round thing. Unfortunately, it looks like this top piece, this orange piece, is riveted to this metal piece, which means that I am going to have to use the drill of knowledge to drill those rivets out of scientific destruction here. So this is the metal part. It's just got this one spring on the bottom which goes against this piece in order to provide some springiness, and this is the top part. So it looks like there is this red part here which comes out, okay, and another red part which also comes out, and then there is this screw looking thing. Yes. So it's a screw with a nut and a spring. So in theory, if I rotate this, that will keep the nut in place. Well, it'll sort of prevent the nut from moving, but the nut is actually not moving. Ah, okay, I see. So this has to be perfectly straight and down against the bottom in order for that nut to remain not moving, and then I can rotate this. Now, what purpose does that serve? Well, if I put this red piece on top, and I put one of these rivets in, which is the pivot of that red piece, that's approximate, then if I rotate this, nothing happens. Well, that's a very well designed piece of equipment right there. I suspect that what was supposed to happen is that this piece was supposed to maybe rise up a little bit, but nothing of the sort seems to be happening. I'm turning this and turning this. Maybe I need to turn it the other way. If I turn it the other way, yeah, the nut is definitely being driven in, but this piece is actually just not moving. So it literally does nothing. Now, if it did actually work, so if it did actually maybe raise this up like that, and there's this other piece that may also do something like this thing, so there's this other piece that sits here that might do something, and then there's this thing over here, and if I were to attach that to here, what it appears to do is it appears to push this part of the blade down. So I think what that means is that it will maybe apply more force as you press, as you squeeze the device. That may be what's happening here. Something like that. I don't know. The point is that this is extremely cheap. It doesn't really work very well. Don't get one of those. Get one of these. It's chiptips, chiptips. I have no music and I can't sing.