so it's time for another electrician's toll review Gary what have you got for us today we've got the
unifox cable tie tool from phoenix contact take all the products fox it's fox's fox I think
well let's let the fox out of the hole Gary what does it actually do it pulls the cable tie to the
correct tensile strength we'll come to that in a minute and cuts it super clean because i'm sure
before we've run a hands along a basket or a cable tray found a tyre wrap with a sharp edge nicked
our fingers with it gordon do you agree yeah could do well i don't see what the problem is you know
normally a cable tie fasten them around yeah there we go
yeah and uh there it is there's the culprit that i've had many a moment on just there and a cut
finger cut hand cut palm thank you very much Gordon i found the culprit all right okay oh
sure yeah okay in this ah okay this one yeah this is that's where the uh tensile strength
comes in gordon believe it or not when you look on a packet of cable toys or you look on their
data sheet they actually have a maximum in choosing kilograms strength that you can
pull those cable ties and this bit of kit here will allow us to set that for each of the toy
let's call them tie wraps maybe tie wraps that we set agreed careful cable ties tie wraps what are
we going with okay okay so put this around here let's have a little look then closer look okay
yeah pop it round as normal i'll pull it around as normal yeah i'll just give it a little nip
up okay so i bring this in is it yeah you bring it it's uh yeah very intuitive yeah okay i'll
go slow for the first time okay i'll pull that right so it grabs it there just grab it watch it
okay so let's have a little look at what you've left me now to catch me finger on
okay that's a very clean end I should be wearing gloves possibly but look how smooth that is Gordon
it moves up a bit because we haven't set the tensile uh strength let's have a look at the
kit ah there you go so i'll dial this up a little bit okay so this is moving away from
one that was at three kg we're going to set it to now uh i'll do a two and a half just to be
a bit awkward on the numbers okay right okay let's try it again bring it around
yeah in your own time okay so pull that one up yep so let's see if i'm getting excited now that
we all like this shaking with excitement here here we go just give it a little pull
i didn't have it in probably no i didn't there's a joke there and i left it
okay let's have another look
and that doesn't move now and that doesn't move right okay give it a little pull no it doesn't so
yeah so just that slight adjustment on that dial yeah i quite like that yeah so so let's think of
the bigger picture then so perhaps we've and we've got cables here we've got some data cables we're
bundling these data cables down maybe we're on a basket and we've got pull pull port and you
know we've all done it before and we've pulled a cable tower that hard that it snaps and you
your throat and go probably inexpensive cable tie would be thrown out as a statement it's not
and let's get the thing the tensile strength on the packet isn't a challenge no yeah it is that's
the maximum that's the point it will snap and i bet that guy we met in doncaster last year who did
an impressive result on the challenge wall yeah but he's ripping cable ties to bits every day yeah
and so when we use it and we've done it on date and a little experiment before we started this
is actually that when you start pulling it tighter and tighter and tighter you're actually start
denting and reforming the cables of which you're trying to support in this case to a basket so
you're saying you can you can go too far you can but it won't necessarily break the cable tie but
you look at the effect on the actual conductors itself so if you start you've gone back to one
gone back to one right okay so we're going to take these white ones here yeah okay so we set
it at um which is 3 kg of tensile strength and we'll see how that one goes when you get it on so
cable tie just pop it around as normal okay and just uh pull it up then with the tool in a minute
right okay all right let me bring the camera in so if we get too excited again
okay so yeah so slide it into if you can do it right it's done there you go you're in with a
chance okay so we know he's gonna have a clean cut so rub your finger across it and that's gripped
it pretty well so i would i'd be quite happy with that yeah and it's nice and look there's
no there's no blood no okay so so that's at 3 kg of tensile strength yeah well let's let's do it in
numbers that i can work with let's go for two next okay today on sesame street that's the number two
okay so i've dialed that up to two right okay another cable toy okay that's all right and we'll
see the effect now we have on this bundle of is it cat six cables these cats so feature these are now
a networking video a bit of leftovers from that if you haven't seen that series it's doing impeccably
well at the moment yeah some good videos in there some good tools in that one as well so
so we expect to get it you're in the right position yeah yeah pull it up
okay so lovely clean cut again but now look at the conductors going look at the one on the top
yeah yeah squash down now they're not here okay so we've added now we're at the six kg of tensile
strength let's go to three now okay so what we're trying to replicate here is how hard maybe an
electrician is pulling these cable ties in order to secure them to a basket or a tray yeah i mean i
think obviously phoenix contact live in that panel building world we've looked at the Crimp Fox on the
channel before which was a four in one tool for doing those ferrules you know we'll love a ferrule
uh but yeah this is now 11 kg all right all right okay so let's see first of all whether the toilet
can cope yeah so there you go oh you saw that pull them conductors yeah yeah just rotate around a
little bit for us yeah look at that one there that is yeah that is really really squash now
but the cable tie can do that so it's within the parameters of the cable tie
but i would suggest it's not doing any favors to the conductors themselves let's go all in
on a four take it to four this is 15 kg now okay okay around so this is probably first thing on a
monday morning after a restful weekend pull and we have x absolutely maybe three so give that a pull
oh now we're ah okay okay so what's what's happened there then gordon's gone beyond the
tentacle strength of the cable tie itself so yeah so so yeah we've got a set of metal cable
ties down here they make a tool also for that don't they gordon yes they do so that's the
bra that's the unifox ctm seven comma nine okay so that will work up to seven point nine millimeter
width steel cable ties with a point three three millimeter thickness whereas this version we've
got here the unifox ct four comma eight catchy number a p we don't know what the p means okay but
it's that will this will handle up to four point eight millimeter wide plastic but oh it's going
to go fast yeah yeah so you just jumped in there a bit before me didn't you so of course it goes on
on the the width of the toy wrap and the thickness of the cable tie whichever this will do up to 1.6
millimeters yeah again so just remember you know phoenix contact the normal world they
live in is the world of the panel builder yes um so obviously people are going to say does it do
the massive cable ties no it's probably not not well it's not this one's not designed for that
and that's not the world that necessary phoenix contact and you can see yourself can you clearly
sitting in that panel just zipping them up and yeah so and they're going to be in very short
proximity to each other maybe as you're bundling them in a panel yeah taking that that bundle up
to the control switches on the door or something like that but yeah that's a super clean cut which
is what i like yeah but it just shows it in it i would imagine electricians are probably a little
bit like me you probably haven't looked at a packet of cable ties and looked for that
tensile strength and then worked out it's well it's limits but this tool here will show you when
you've gone beyond the limit and then you can actually see the damage that you're doing today
there so i can't slide that one up but should we have a little closer
look it's bundled i can slide if i pull it really hard but it hasn't damaged
you know you can just see when it's gone into the uh the outer jacket let's look
this one here is yeah properly squash them down hasn't it yeah just because the cable
tie can do it doesn't mean it's a good idea does it yeah but not nice i like that i think
yeah so we like bringing tools to the channel not just necessarily the run-of-the-mill tools
that we've seen on the channel but these ones here that are specialist tools they
have an application probably for panel wiring etc or if you're doing a lot of data cables
i think it would be a good idea but it's that clean cut and leaving behind a job that obviously
isn't going to cause me any grief in the future it looks like i've followed you around on a few jobs
with all those razor sharp cuts on your cable ties as always we're interested in your comments
is this something that you might consider buying in the future maybe you've got one at the moment
and you get on really well with it and you can tell us other applications that you've been using
it for please leave those comments below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can you