What is a shrink tube?

[crawler486]

I'm building a DOD 280 compressor.
I cant get the VTL5C2 so I'm going to use the alternative such as this..

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/v2/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=141&op=page&SubMenu=

What is a shrink tube and can someone explin in newbie terms
on how should I go about it.

Many Thanks!!

[Travis]

A tube of material that shrinks when heat is applied.  Heat shrink.  In this case, the heat shrink serves to isolate the led/ldr from outside light interference.  I usually don't use it, as the box provides sufficient isolation.

You may want to mount and test your LED before you hook everything together.

http://www.radioshack.com/search.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&find=heat+shrink&hp=search&SRC=1

Small Bear carries a nice variety.

[crawler486]

Can I just used any household item to bind them together
and just put a tape around it?

[lightningfingers]

Can I just used any household item to bind them together
and just put a tape around it?

yeah, works for me

or you could use clear tape then paint it black

[Mark Hammer]

Shrink tubing can be obtained in a broad variety of diameters and colours.  Certainly one of its advantages is that heating it causes it to become more rigid, where warming up electrical or other tape wrapped around components being soldered to a board causes them to become more viscous, slippery, and looser, and maybe even melt.

These days, I have taken to covering all connections to pot lugs in shrink tubing, simply because I find myself wanting the flexibility to reorient pots to be able to stuff more in a smaller space, and I want to avoid shorts.  Such tubing is also helpful for covering lugs on switches so that metal battery coverings don't short out those, and also for providing strain relief on patch cables (although you obviuosly need bigger tubing for that).  Finally, lots of people take advantage of the many colours this stuff comes in to use shrink tubing as a way of colour coding cables and leads.  For example, if you had a power distribution block for feeding 9v to your pedals and you wanted to keep track of which pedals were getting a positive ground power feed, you could use a distinctive colour shrink tube on those patch cables just to be sure.

You can shrink such tubing in many different ways.  Heat guns are the classic touch-free way, but not everybody has one and they can be clumsy overkill in some situations.  Personally, I often end up using my soldering iron to shrink the stuff.  Be forewarned, though, it gums up your soldering tip so you'll need to clean afterwards.