How to get insulation off copper wire. The plastic on electrical wire can be removed successfully but standard wire strippers are not that helpful when there is a lot of electrical wire to strip.
There are two types of wire strippers, manual and automatic.
Both will strip aluminum, steel or copper wire however, the thickness of your wire and how much wire you need to strip should also be included in your decision making.
Learning how to get the insulation off copper wire the right way is easy. No need to burn, bite or melt the insulation off the scrap electrical wire.
As I mentioned, there is the industrial cable stripper and the handheld wire stripper. The main difference between the two is the size of copper wire that they can effectively strip.
The same wire stripper that appears in the video can be found for less than 70 bucks on Amazon.
These types of wire strippers work really good for projects around the home or office.
To strip the plastic off some speaker wire, copper wire from a ceiling fan or the wire within an outlet, all that you need are a pair of handheld wire strippers.
If you have to buy this tool, it can be found online or at local home improvement stores. You get what you pay for so it would be wise to purchase a pair of wire strippers that come with a free replacement warranty.
I like many people have had cheap tools break in the middle of a repair. No warranty means no free exchange.
How To Get The Insulation Off Copper Wire
Handheld wire strippers are easy to use. Most have 6 to 8 holes on them that equal different gauges/sizes of wire.
To use this type of wire stripper you simply place it on a piece of wire 1 to 2 inches from the end of the wire.
Close and hold the tool steady, then pull the wire slowly through the wire strippers.
The plastic insulation on the wire will slide right off the wire.
An industrial cable stripper is able to strip much thicker wires than a handheld wire stripper.
Industrial cable strippers are used by machine shops, electricians and a growing number of scrap metal collectors because they deal with scrap cable wire on a daily basis that needs to be stripped.
Although the words, industrial cable stripper, make this type of wire stripping machine sound enormous, there are inexpensive tabletop versions that can attach right to your work bench.
They work nearly the same as handheld wire strippers. You must adjust the guide wheels and cutting tool on the wire stripping machine down or up to the thickness of your scrap electrical wire.
The wire must then be fed through one side of the tool. If the wire stripping machine is a manual version, you will have to pull the wire through the machines cutting tool.
Automatic wire strippers are self explanatory but you should keep the speed of the machine low until you get the hang of using it to strip wire.