Putting a wire into a tube

[wildcat]

Finally I started to move the electronics off of a piece of MDF and into a metal enclosure. I am to the point that I need to run the wires in the plastic tubes. I have been trying to follow Aaron's instructions but without any success pass getting the wire maybe 3ft down the tube. It is impressive how quickly the friction grows. I am using nylon string and keeping the tube straight (without doing this there is NO movement). What's the secret here?

Thanks.

[ViperTX]

Well, Home Depot has a wire lube which will help.

[powerr]

i used a fishtape, a piece #12 solid wire would work too

[Al_The_Man]

Yeah, a fish tape is the fastest, failing that, any single conductor 14# ~ #10, stranded or solid in a pinch, bend the end over in a fairly tight loop, if the run is fairly long and the fish wire stalls, bend the end over of another length and feed in from the opposite end, when you figure both have crossed, start twisting one of them, this coils around the other and with one person feeding and the other gently pulling you will now have a pull wire, once you have that, you should be in business, tape the ingoing cables to the pull wire, staggered, preferably, and get someone to pull on the pull-wire while you feed them in.
This works on long runs and full conduit.
Al.

[project5k]

and the lube sure does make things easier.. how long of a tube are you trying to push this wire through????

[wildcat]

The tube is 3/8" ID plastic tubing and approximately 12 feet long. I picked up some lube tonight and will give that a try tomorrow. Hope it does help.

[project5k]

i think that you will find that if you get it on your hands you wont be able to hold anything, doorknobs, wire, coffee cups all become ungraspable... slop up the wires, shoot a little down into the tube and start shoving.. i pushed 4 stands of 12-2 romex into 25 feet of 3/4" conduit with this stuff...and that was with 180 deg of bends...

[wildcat]

The lube helped... pulling with a string helped... but the thing that helped the most was pitching the real of tubing that looked like it had been left in the hot sun and then sat on by an elephant. Lube along with new tubing worked wonders!

[Hacksaw]

Another simple suggestion would be to use an air compressor to blow a string through the pipe or a shop vac to suck it through then use the string to pull your wire...I am an electrician and do this almost every day.
Lance

[project5k]

hey hacksaw.. you ever tie a string to a tennis ball or a badmitton birdy and blow that through the conduit?? we had to do this in south florida when we pulled something like 50 strands of fiber optic.. then used the green string to pull a 1/2" rope through, then pull the cables with a power puller....ofcourse that was a 350 ft run with 180deg of bends....

[Hacksaw]

Ive never used that method for going through a pipe but I have used a similar metod for crossing a ravine...I have an air cannon that I built for confetti (parades etc...) and one day I needed to get a temp cable across a 300' ravine so I tied a string to a shop towel that I wrapped a golf ball in charged the cannon to 150 psi and about 325 yards later it came to rest wow did I underestimate the power of my toy.Fortunately there was no one injured and nothing damaged but I did burn half my bucket of string Lance

[project5k]

WAAAAZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! mind emailing me or posting a pic of this little toy?