Environmental Protection of Electrical Splices

The sealing of automotive splices through the use of heat-shrinkable tubing has been shown to be an effective means to provide protection from the electrical, mechanical, chemical, and temperature environments that an electrical splice is exposed to in automotive applications. The product must not only meet these requirements, but also must be able to be installed reproducibly at production rates. In order to meet these requirements, a splice sealing system was developed which consists of:

• A properly designed adhesive lined heat shrinkable tube which can withstand the electrical, mechanical, chemical, and thermal environments which are present in automotive applications.
• A methodology to select the proper size of tubing to seal a wide range of splice configurations, wire types, and wire gauge sizes.
• An installation method which will ensure that the product can be installed at production rates in a reliable manner.

This paper will highlight this splice sealing system and illustrate the importance of each of these three steps.