a steel wire armored with cable or SWA cable this will be the first time my learners have actually
used SWA cable so we just can be using an offcut as we move forward we'll see how to fasten this
to brick and block surfaces as well as the cable tray and then be making the gland off when it's in
situ but this will be the first time we've had a go at making off the end so therefore we're
doing an off cut cable on a bench and we've seen what skills are required in order to terminate
the gland onto the end of the SWA cable so see how we're going to start that process so
first of all we need to know what type of Steel wire armored cable we've got and there's always
it's the number of cores first so in this case we got a three core so three conductors within
the actual construction of a steel wire armored a cable and then we need to know their size in this
case they are 2.5 millimeter squared and that's all three conductors are of the same size there's
no reduced conductor sizes we've often having twin and CPC cables so we've got a three core 2.5 SWA
cable and next we need to look at the gland pack to confirm it's the correct gland for the cable
that we've selected on the back of the gland pack we have a grid matrix which suggests the size of
the conductors so we've got 1.5, 2.5, four six ten sixteen and then it goes across and looks
at the number of conductors within the actual SWA cable whether it be two three four etc and
we're gonna match this gland to the actual cable that we use him so as we look down here at 2.5
and scroll across to three core it says 20s so in other words our gland is going to be a 20s and in
this case we've selected a 20s twenty for the size of hole that will need to be knocked out
of the box and s for the smaller gland body they do a twenty which again goes in the 20 mm hole
but has a slightly bigger gland body and land nuts so we've got the right size gland for the cable I
see what's in that gland pack next so once you've opened up the gland pack you'll see what's inside
we have got two shrouds two locking nuts to gland nuts to gland bodies and two earthing rings within
the actual gland pack so they give you enough to terminate both ends of a SWA cable so just
to recap two shrouds to lock nuts to gland nuts to gland bodies and to earthing rings in the actual
gland pack itself and we look at how we're going to make those off onto one end of our steel wire
armored cable let's do that next so we before we start the terminating process itself we want to
give ourselves a realistic length a termination end so if we take a consumer unit and I like to
have the cable go beyond the consumer unit the consumer unit length again so if this SWA was
being installed into this enclosure we're going to want that as an approximate length for the
point of which we start the termination to make that a little easier for our students first time
out I'm just going to put a little ring of tape around here in order that we know the
length we're working with but also it may aid us in getting a clean cut when we go with a hacksaw
as part of the terminating process of the gland itself so we've got our length set and we're now
ready to look at actually fitting the gland to the SWA or steel wire armored cable in the next
part of the presentation so I'm gonna take one of my shrouds first I'm gonna insert it onto the
end of the SWA cable and pull nice and firmly down hopefully you can see the area in which the cable
is and the area in which it isn't I want to cut round the top but making sure the shroud has a
nice tight fit to the SWA cable so I'm gonna go in the slightly lighter topped area here make a
little mark with my knife or the luxury of a bench press nice and firm with my knife I'm gonna take
off the end and then I can slide it onto my SWA cable and you can see it won't slide down pull
it down onto the actual cable itself and we fitted the shroud first so that's the first thing we do
is fit the shroud and then we're going to look at the skills required to fit the actual gland
itself next one we'll take a junior hacksaw and I'm going to hacksaw around the top here of the
tape as best I can trying to keep it as square as I possibly can nice and firm in with the hacksaw
all the way round in order that I can remove the outside PVC and break away the steel wire armored
underneath what tends to happen is students are really vigorous on the top part of it and then
just give it a little bit of a wipe rounder back with their junior hacksaw when they become very
difficult to break off so we need to make sure when we go round that we get nice firm strikes
all the way round the SWA itself following the tape line which is there as best we can to aid us
for our first SWA end but nice and firm into those steel armorings don't all they through because if
we all go through obviously we will damage the conductors beneath but it's a skill to develop
as we go how hard can we press with our hacksaw blade in order to get well into the SWA armoring
and not through it and into the conductor's itself just see how that's going to go so hopefully I've
gone all the way around the cable itself pretty square and fairly well into the armoring itself
so the next stage when I removed the outside PVC hopefully we can break off these steel armoring
with relative ease so my next task is to remove this outside PVC using my knife holding firmly
on to the armored cable itself I'm going to run my knife out along the cable length and then remove
it like so we've got the cable outside PVC removed and now I'll inspect the end here just to confirm
that I've caught all the steel wire armors in before the next process you have got a little
bit of an option if you've missed one or two of them just to go in and brush against it with your
hacksaw once again it looks like I've got most of them all of them actually on the way round so
I'm ready for the next stage so the next stage is to take four or five of these steel wire armoring
at a time just gently unwind them off the cable itself and then gently rock them backwards and
forwards and hopefully they will just work hard and break away from the base well with hacksaw
it and they come off take four or five more a few too many there and again just gently work against
them before you break away a few more and once again just work them off till broken away okay so
they're all the way we can see a nice clean end here okay none of the actual our amourings are
hooking over okay they're all nice and straight so we're ready to move on to the next stage of
putting the gland on so next I'm going to put on my gland nut making sure the threads in the gland
that are pointing upwards so we slide that on and keep it out of the way and next we're going to
have to work out how much of the PVC we're going to remove to expose the SWA themselves we've got
to get it so they and I'll call it a thimble part this part a the rough edge pins underneath the SWA
itself allowing us to tighten onto the threads above using the nut the gland that we've just
put on so we need to make sure that we don't take too much of the PVC off because obviously when we
throw the shroud back into its original position upright we obviously don't want to see the SWA's
poking underneath so we've got only a very small amount of area here of which we can remove the
PVC and not be seen when the shroud gets put back into place so in this position here I'm probably
going to come about a centimeter 10 mm below the taped area and I'm gonna run round with my knife
in that area here we can be nice and firm with our knife as we go around now this PVC here because we
won't penetrate through the SWA the steel wire armoring here so nice and firm with our knife
all the way round and then take our knife and we can remove that part next popping that off okay so
we've exposed steel wire armor which we're going to position our gland underneath those armorings
in this section here the armorings can be pinned here and the gland nut will come up to fit so we
can get these sprayed open in order to drop our gland in in the next stage so we're going to do
next is take our gland with what I call the thimble part or the rough edge down I'm gonna
put onto the end of our cables like so and we're gonna wind this open in order that we spray this
SWA the armoring here open to drop this on the inside so this thimble part here will drop on
the inside here doesn't want to go beyond the thread so it wants to stop at the end of what
I call this thimble part this rough edge and then we can bring the nut up to match it's a
bit difficult now to keep our arms out the way in order to show you this but I'll show you the best
I can with a worn this open and drop it in in the next part okay so I've got gland body here gland
nuts here and I'm gonna wind it open and just drop my gland in underneath the SWA itself it's quite a
firm rotation as I go round okay so I'm going to bring it up and round quite firmly and they just
dropped my gland in itself so see if I can do that so firmly round and then just drop my gland in so
what I'm trying to do is make sure that the SWA are in the section which I called a thimble the
rough part okay so that's it so I just known as firm whined and just dropped it into position what
I do next is I pull it out from fully insert it so I just put it back a fraction and allow the nut
to come up to meet the threads making sure they don't cross thread and then I push it back down
those threads have started so I push back down this force now going back down my hand pushing
the gland itself downward so it's all the way in the armoring and then I'll just wind it up with
my fingers like so and then I'm ready to tighten this off using a set of spanners let's see that in
the next stage so I've got two spanners and both ends I've got 22 mm on the other end being 20 so
when you - 20 mm ends and I'm gonna have one spanner on the actual nut itself and the other
span that's going to be on the actual gland body itself and I'll try and keep myself out of the way
and what I'm willing to do is holding the one for the gland body with a spanner and tighten off the
actual nuts I'm bringing it back up I'm not going to twist this one and we'll just twist the gland
nut in order to tighten it onto the gland body let's see if I can do that and keep myself out
of the way at the same time so I'm in position ready to tighten off the nut itself holding the
body and were tight and the actual gland nut holding the gland body in a tight position and
bring that one up until it's super firm that stays there probably got a tiny bit more of a
turn in order to make sure it's super tight more turn you can see what we're doing that's it that's
locked off super tight we always use spanners at my college because if we don't we shave off
the brass parts of the body if we were to use adjustable grips so I know an industry often you
see people using the adjustable grips but it will shave off all the the brass parts of the body and
we'd like to reuse these again so therefore we're using spanners so what we've done is gland bodies
been held into position and we've tightened off the gland nuts in order to secure the steel wire
armored in the actual gland body itself so next stage we'll be removing this outside PVC in order
to expose the conductors in the next part of the presentation so what we're gonna do about 10 to
15 mm away from the body itself the body itself will be connected to earth so we don't want the
conductors to rub against the actual body in case we get a fall to earth so we're going to
come up about 10 to 15 mm I'm going to take our knife and score gently round not too firm now
because obviously the next layer of PVC in this case thermosetting PVC will be the insulating
material around the conductor's so scored round and I'm going to see if I can there's no flex so
we open it out and hopefully this will just pull away from the conductors I'm gonna twist it as I
go so just give me a little twist as I pull away and hopefully we expose our three conductors so
there we have our three conductors exposed but about 10 to 15 mm of insulation still around
here and we've exposed our conductors which have insulation around the actual conductors themselves
of thermosetting PVC which we've discussed in the classroom so I've exposed our conductor's now it's
a case now of fitting into a enclosure with a 20 mm hole locking off it using a lock nut but
ensuring that the earthing ring for me sits on the outside so that would be the next thing to go on
earthing ring into our enclosure followed by the nut on the inside this video presentation really
is all about making off our first-ever SWA gland and using the correct technique to do so before I
finish I will need to check that none of the steel wire armors themselves have crossed over so I need
to rotate all the way around and ensure that none of them have missed so gone underneath the actual
gland body itself so it's a rotate around you can see that they've all gone in and none have missed
and then have crossed over so that's the SWA gland hopefully almost complete tghe gland is on
the gland super tight conductors have now been exposed as as far as I need
more learners to go with their first-ever SWA gland I hope this video has been some help
you