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SOLAR GENERATOR VIDEO#3: Stripping Wire
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Feb 22, 2024
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View Video Transcript
0:00
Now building a solar generator involves some basic electrical skills and I want
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to show you one of the most basic here and that's stripping wire. You're going
0:11
to be dealing with with two kinds of wire. There's wire itself which just has
0:17
insulation and a single conductor inside and what would be called properly called
0:24
cable which has more than one insulated wire inside and this is the kind of
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cable that you'd use to connect say the photovoltaic panel to the actual solar
0:38
generator box with the equipment inside and you know the simplest way to get the
0:46
insulation off and to expose the conductors is just with a utility knife
0:49
like this so it's just a matter of whittling away the insulation. There's nothing to it
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really and you just don't want to go too far and cut into the conductor. It's not
1:05
likely with a stranded conductor that's this thick but you still you don't want
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to cut too much of that and there you go. It's pretty simple. Now one thing I
1:20
should mention you should always use stranded conductor in this project. I can
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get wire like this it's just a solid piece of copper and that's going to work
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but not so well with direct current. Direct current much prefers stranded
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wire like this because the current actually travels around the outside of each of the
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strands so you're going to get more current carrying capacity from a stranded conductor
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like this. Now another method and it really doesn't cost very much and it works very well
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is wire strippers. I really like this I've had this for years it works beautifully. You have
2:01
to know the size of the conductor and then you choose that appropriate little notch
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So this would be I'm pretty sure it's number 12 so we will we will put number 12 in here
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This has got some pretty thick insulation on it but the conductor itself is number 12. So
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you just squeeze down like this and then and then give it a pull and the insulation comes off
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It's a little bit faster and you're not going to damage the conductor as well. One very nice
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thing about wire strippers like these is that they're also terrific tools for cutting small
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bolts and machine screws. You can just cut bolts with wire cutters or bolt cutters but
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it ruins the threads in the end and that's what this feature here prevents. If you can see in
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here the top part of these holes are threaded so you thread the bolt in that you want whatever
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size 1024 or 1032 or 832. You thread it in as long as you want the bolt to be and then when
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you squeeze the handles it shears off the bolt and then when you take the bolt out because it's
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threaded in the threads get cleaned up. So your bolt is ready to accept a nut or to thread into
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an electrical box or some such thing. These bolt holes here are the kinds of things that go with
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small fasteners in the electrical world and that's why they include this on a pair of wire
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strippers like this. A project like this solar generator will involve cables and you're going
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to need to get to the conductors to make the various connections. So stripping the wires inside
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of a cable is the same process as I've already shown you. You can use a knife or some wire
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strippers but to get to those wires you have to do a little work with a utility knife. Now you
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notice how the conductors are here and then there's some some filler material all around them
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You're going to need to strip back some of the outer husk of this cable and your first step is
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to make a slice through it where the tip of the knife comes through in the filler area. You don't
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want to hurt the insulation on the wires so you'll need a flat surface to work on and you just do a
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little slice like this. Maybe not necessarily all the way through initially because you do want to
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be careful with this. You can't go too deep. I think I'm all the way through now so let's just
4:49
see. Not quite. There we go. So now I can start peeling back this outer husk and I'm gonna peel
5:04
back more or less depending on how much I need. This might be to go into an electrical box or
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some kind of a connection with the wires coming through. So when I've peeled back as much as I
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want I'm just gonna cut off the insulation all the way around so it comes free of the wires
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You need a sharp utility knife for this and you do need to be careful
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There we go. Now these filler strips can be trimmed away with the knife or the wire cutter
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and once again it's just a matter of getting your wire strippers, choosing the right size
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this is number 12, squeezing down and popping it off. Now you're ready to make your connections
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