Heat Shrink Tubing

[athowells]

Do Heat Shrink Tubing come with the E.S.C and motor?
How important is it to use heat shrink tubing?
Can you take the tubing off?
Can you use something else?

Thank-you for your reply.

[TUCRACEMAN]

My cars have no heat shrink tubing on any part. Also, none of my ESCs have come with any HST.
~Dave

[jeepinator]

Yeah, I am not sure where you would use it.
Well, I can think of one. Sometimes I shrink a bit on the motor wires right at the end, where they solder on to the motor, so I can hold it a bit longer when soldering/unsoldering.

Oh, and the Cyclone ESC's come with some teensy stuff to protect the capacitor leads from shorting and whatnot.

[athowells]

Is it all right just to use electrical tape?

[GTpanda]

HST is a plus with respect to tape because it shapes exactly on the joint, and there's no glue messing things up. it's also more heat-resistant (!) than many brands of tape, which can be an issue.

In general, insulating does good to electric circuits, especially hi-current ones like ours. It's a matter of making a nice and tidy job, but you can't put HST everywhere (e.g. on the "T" joint - if you wire it that way - on the positive battery-esc-motor connection)

Novak (http://www.teamnovak.com) (howto section) and RCCA (http://www.rccaraction.com) (rc articles section) are a couple of places where you can see pictures of how to wire things the right way, and they also show where HST may be used

[bullfrog]

hey guys ive been wondering for a while where can i pic up some HST???? and about how much does it cost??? thanks

[GTpanda]

www.towerhobbies.com (http://www.towerhobbies.com) and search "heat shrink", you get a ton of choices (maybe not the cheapes I've ever seen... but then, it's online!)

check with your electric stuff shop, they should have plenty for cheap

[ 09-20-2001: Message edited by: GTpanda ]

[athowells]

But does electrical tape work?

[RichieRich]

Guys! You can get heat shrink tubing at Radio Shack. There's a 36 piece set that contains multiple diameters and colors for like $2.50. There's another set that contains only black tubing that's less than $2. I used the black tubing to cover the solder joint on my 3 wire Novak ESC. I would use electrical tape as a temporary fix since it will eventually lose its tackiness and fall off.