Joining two or more cable seamlessly.

Thread Starter

BringMeAnother

Joined Oct 21, 2012
12
Hi, first of all I use cat5e cable for pretty much everything because I have a large supply of it, so even my power cables are cat5e. I'm not using high voltage or high current, so I hope that is okay.

My real question is, is there a way to join two or more cat5e cables so that I won't need a junction box that is taking so much space. I still want to make it look pretty though. I was thinking soldering each wire, put an electric tape for each wire then cover all of it with the original cable plastic. The problem is, that plastic is already cut. Do you think I could use the soldering iron to melt the plastic to seal the whole thing. Any other suggestion are welcome as long as the joint looks pretty and does not take too much space. Thanks.
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,266
Hello,

You could cover the wires with some heat shrink tubing before soldering.
Shift the tubing, heat it and it will fit.
In the attached PDF you will find some info from 3M.
The tubing is sold by mouser.

Bertus
 

Attachments

KJ6EAD

Joined Apr 30, 2011
1,581
You can make staggered, heat shrink tubing covered solder joints and cover them with another outer sheath of shrink tube but the outer sheath tubing will be nearly 8" long, you will lose cable performance for data due to untwist at the solder joints and the resultant diameter of the splice will be approximately double the cable diameter; all in all a kludge, but if that's what you want, that's how you get it.
 

Thread Starter

BringMeAnother

Joined Oct 21, 2012
12
In my particular case, I'll be using the connection to deliver power, so interference won't be an issue.

Out of curiosity though, if I did use the cable for data, would adding more layers of say electrical tapes between the pairs thus increasing their distance decrease interference? I mean cat6 cable basically have that plastic separator between the 4 pairs which makes it better than cat5e.
 

KJ6EAD

Joined Apr 30, 2011
1,581
Thicker insulation would reduce crosstalk between pairs some and decrease capacitance a little but your data speed would still be reduced since your splice is altering the characteristic impedance of the cable. Interference from an outside source isn't a big issue but would increase as you untwist more wire creating a better noise antenna.
 
Top