cable tray on a roll bonkers this is out of my comfort zone i go on holiday for a couple of days
and i come back you've created a video that caused quite a storm didn't it it certainly did yeah we
did a quick install of this rollatray and that video so far done 20 million views and obviously
from that there's a lot of questions that we're hopefully gonna address in this video today
however just let's set the scene of where we are the keen efix viewers may recognize
the area behind us uh it's an industrial unit we inherited about 18 months ago and just let
me tell you the the wiring in here wasn't quite up to par and we did make a separate video about
that where we look at some of the issues that we wanted to solve but there's loads of things to
comment on that video if you haven't seen it but i thought since gary's on holiday and we have an
opportunity to rewire this building we'd do things a little bit differently i'm the traditionalist
so as i turn and look behind me you're telling me that these lewd and top tiers are actually
the distribution board for the unit i've got a bit of flexible conduit and you know my saying
if you can't work with proper conduit you use flexible conduit and in that conduit we come out
and we've got our tails i think i'm in a world of trouble here gordon well gary it's called
new ways of thinking possibly ways to improve productivity and that's what we're going to
look at during this video and we'll discuss some of those things you might like some of the ideas
you may not you may have your own opinions and obviously will love those comments but
you know start with this this is this is standard fare across in europe yeah i thought obviously
we're still friends with europe i thought we'd try and introduce some of that here but this
distribution board came completely pre-assembled surge protection all the internal wiring done
and we'll make a separate video talking about some of those features that we think again can
help electricians reduce the amount of wiring they have to do on site and yeah create a great uh i
think it looks fantastic and the cables come from here and go out to other loot and top to boards
where we repeat the same process with the set of breakers as well as the outlets required in the
area saving electrician's time yeah now obviously gary was on holiday i wasn't actually going to
install it myself i had to hand it over to our tame electrician Ross who is pretty fast when it
comes to installing stuff so no better person to have a crack at doing the roller tray with
so what we've done here we've left this board here with a 300 millimeter wide roller tray uh we're
using there are armored cables i did try to find some what we call the high tough or nyy type cables
which again is another european cable to see if we can do that but i couldn't find them in the cross
section that we needed for the job so we've had to go with regular armored cable ran the roller tray
up across the wall she formed a 90 degree formed a sweeping bend taking it up the cable basket
ran along with some also some ventilation pipe that we've also got installed here down to the
other top tier unit in the narrower 150 mil rollatray you changed direction a couple of times now
you did one where you rolled it around the corner almost like wallpaper that being one technique and
the other one is where you overlapped the two don't you and you joined the two together where
you changed direction is that right yeah that's right so just just trace rollatray back to what
was intended for right and that's not necessarily here but that's what metro set us the task to see
if we could use it in some new applications that we've done here originally this was designed for
the raised flooring system you'd find in an office all right so of course that's a stilted floor
we've got those sort of floor boxes with sockets and data in and underneath there the roller tray
would be supporting the wiring system under there yeah so imagine you're doing that office refurb
gary yeah traditionally you'd be struggling to get those three meter lengths of tray in the lift yeah
would be so that means you're gonna have to take the fire escape right okay and you say they're
three meters in length yeah okay and i'm gonna be struggling at the stairs but this comes in rolls
of 15 meter is that right yeah so 50 meters very easy for one person to handle put it in the back
of a compact van you know drive into the city i've already parked easier than you because you've got
your three meter lens on your roof rack yeah out the back of that carry it into place cut the tape
that's on there right and then it literally just rolls out and then i can obviously use my uh other
favorite tool of the moment which is this spit 40e and fire the fixings into the floor you could use
traditional fixings but why would you i'd never use a screwdriver anymore since i discovered this
yeah that in the it's a big productivity improvement so great for flat surfaces okay so
flat surfaces and of course when we're in there obviously we're going to change direction and
we're going to join those together aren't we going to label one on top of the other am i right in
thinking there's a six mil bolt that you just send through that fixes the two together yeah so the
two shapes so you'll see obviously the the indents in the tray itself i've got two functions one is
obviously put your cable ties around there like you would do on a traditional tray i stopped yeah
you mentioned cable ties and that's another thing that came out that short formatted video was the
cable tie puller for steel cable ties and now well it come however we think we've found a better one
and we're going to review this one from phoenix contact so check out the link for that one as well
but obviously the good thing is you don't need to space this right yeah so there's none of that
channel sorry you know you don't get to cut your channel you don't get to use the zebedees
uh but the other thing is the shapes tessellate together there's a word back from school
okay yeah i'll remember it well tetris you remember your tetris oh yeah that's better yeah
so the two sheets interlock together and then you just simply put a six millimeter bolt through
it's not self-tapping it cuts it actually uses the the pre-formed thread to lock them in the
tray job done okay so it sounds too simple does it it's easy that must mean it's saving electrician's
time isn't it yeah so met proclaim in you know the typical underflow application it's saving 90
time compared to traditional methods okay and yeah so whether you're whether you're in there you know
for me that's a big productivity it is now if i'm thinking about a 15 meter roll i might not
need 15 meters so i'm obviously gonna have to cut it down to length how's that process going
to happen okay so along with this we also got a special guillotine i've got behind the scenes
which you can slice uh on the guillotine we could use the traditional angle grinder
or a jigsaw but the advantage of the guillotine is there's obviously no dust right okay and if
we think of that initial application obviously a lot of those i'd like to say data centers okay
there's a lot of computer equipment people in that industry get very nervous about dust okay they
paranoid and want to sweep up all the time is that the thinking well i'll get into the server
along with that other thing you'll see in that industry called zinc whiskers okay
zinc whiskers well that sounds quite complicated and technical so i think that's a q a question
maybe for our good friend joe robinson isn't it yeah oh if you know what a zinc whisker is
yeah put a comment below um but yeah really easy with the guillotine uh the other advantage this
is pre-galvanized okay so it's uh it's made from a pre-galvanized sheet so you don't get uh zinc
whiskers okay uh but obviously that does limit it to sort of more indoor applications as well okay
so and that is a 0.8 of a mil in thickness and they come in three standard widths then they come
300 450 and there's the smallest one 150 yeah right in 150 yeah and we've used in this job
we've used the 300 and the 150 but then we think of other applications so again it has to be a
surface that's smooth and flat you're not going to hang it between uh and expect it to you're
not going to hang it from a trapeze on the roof okay or set it over girders yeah yeah yeah unless
well yeah what do you think on that um it is for flat surface so we're thinking in other
applications so think of possibly the lift shaft in the building right that makes sense
you've got a sort of solid concrete core that goes top to bottom the building 15 meters of that
yeah yeah very easy punch punch down you come yeah it'd be fitting in no time yeah or possibly
some of those service risers as well but again it depends on how the building's being constructed so
we think it saves electricians time and therefore we must love it at efix because that's one of our
mantras in it can we save electricians time but we're always interested in your thoughts so the
roller tray from metro have you fitted it before and in what applications have you been watching
this video and thought well i didn't think of that and i can now think of some new applications
please leave those in the comments below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can