Quote:
Originally Posted by Dockhead
I have pulled two cables up to my first spreaders for power to my spreader lights, and power to my PTZ camera.
I am very pleased with the cable I finally found (after a torturous Internet search) -- real marine tinned two conductor 16 awg cable encased in a robust PVC waterproof jacket.
But I need to distribute power from one cable to two spreader lights on either side of the mast. I had first thought about pulling separate cables for each side, but it's getting crowded in my mast conduits.
So what is the right way to split the power off to two different fixtures?
The only thing I have been able to think of is to crimp (I have heat seal Molex crimp connectors and a quality Swedish crimp tool) two into one, seal up with a heat gun, then seal again with a heat shrink tube. Then leave the joint inside the mast.
What do you guys think? Is there a better way?
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I am assuming that you are using LED's for your spreader lights, either that very low wattage incandescent.
Here's a good way if you're going 2 wires by 1, then this crimp works well
link here, but I bet someone on your side of the pond also sells em.
Now there are 2 ways to do it. 1. get a dbl 16awg wire ferrule, and crimp it into a but splice, that assumes you are using a larger wire as the feeder. You could also use a step down butt crimp if you feeder wire is the same size.
If your feeder is the same size as your branch wires, go to an up size by 2 on the , then 2 wires one side, and 1 wire coming from the non insulated end, crimp all three in the same ferrule.
Now these don't have strain relief nor are they
water tight. So you need to put on some heat shrink tube. What I do is is start the heat shrink from the
single wire side, and once it's closed up, I take my hot melt glue gun and shoot a little into the dbl wire side then I continue to heat shrink the rest of the joint.
This makes a
water tight connection on both sides of the heat shrink tube, including the dbl wire side.
Now you have a nice tight little package, with strain relief.
You can also do the same thing with an uninsulated pass through crimp sized to capture 3 wires.
lloyd