Oops. I did something stupid

apocalypto

New member
Joined
Nov 14, 2010
Messages
135
Reaction score
0
Location
Alabama
I was eagerly cutting into an extremely thick bubble wrap package from china and my heart stopped when I realized I had cut through 3 wires of a cable inside! grrrrr :(

The cable in question is a 5-pin rgb monitor cable which came with my VGA-to-CGA converter card.

It looks like this: http://www.arcadespareparts.com/products/images/vga_rgb_cga_video_converter_33846_12215.jpg

I cut through the green, white and black wires.

Is this easily repairable? I am pretty new to electronics and have never repaired wire before. I don't know where to begin. Is it even worth repairing or should I order a new one from china? :confused:
 
Probably easy enough to fix. 3 options come to mind depending on where the wire is cut. If it's cut very close to the connector you may be able to remove the old pins from the connector, strip the wires, put new crimps on the wire and reseat them in the connector. If the wires are cut a bit further from the connector you could strip the wires on both sides (connector side other side of the corresponding cut wire. Slide a piece of shrink tube on the longer side of the wire. Twist the wires together and solder them together. After soldered slide the shrink tube over the exposed wire and use a heat gun to shrink the tube onto the wire. You could use electrical tape in place of shrink tube but it's a little ghetto. It will technically do the job though. You can also strip the wires on both sides as mentioned above and get some twist lock wire nuts and basically twist the wires together. If you know how a wire nut works then you understand that taht is all you have to do. Strip wires. Slight twist together. Put wire nut in place. Twist wire nut on wire. It will twist tight into place and also covers the exposed wire. This won't be the cleanest look but it will technically fix the issue.
 
Yeah they are cut pretty much in the middle of the cable so will have to join cut ends together. I'll probably try the heat shrink tubing method. Thanks for the suggestion, very helpful and informative!
 
If there won't be stress on the wires, you could use those crimped on butt-splice connectors too.
 
Back
Top Bottom