Splicing Control Cables Correctly

First, Alan strips back the cable jacket and removes the foil shielding with a proper cable-stripping tool for a clean cut. Then, he cuts two appropriately-sized sections of heat-shrink tubing that go over the individual conductors; the tubing insulates them from each other and the shield. He also strips back the conductor insulation to give himself about a 1/2-inch amount to work with.

He then takes a larger piece of tubing to cover the entire splice. Once the larger piece of heat shrink is on, Alan starts twisting the corresponding wires around each other.

For ease of soldering, it’s best to keep the conductors as far away from each other as possible after each pair has been twisted together, as Alan demonstrates. The soldering iron should be fit for the job and warm the solder enough to make a solid connection. Alan wipes all excess solder off after he finishes soldering. Then, when he joins the wires, he uses a little bit of solder at the end of his iron to conduct heat into the joint and pull the solder in without melting the solder over the joint.

Once the connections have been made, Alan slides the heat-shrink tubing over the connections and applies heat to shrink the tubing over the splice. Then, some final best practices include labeling your cables appropriately and shrinking some tubing over the foil shielding to prevent it from making contact with anything conductive.