I haven't had much time for modding lately, starting a new job and all. But I finally got a section of cabling from the
PSU braided.
Everyone's sleeving their PSUs these days, so I said "Sleeving, shmleeving!" and came up with what I thought was a unique concept: rather than hide the wires, why not show them off? But it turns out Glitterkill himself already did this exact thing:
GK's braided wiring
We did braid them using a bit different technique, I used a 3-strand braiding technique, treating both inner black ground wires as a single wire, while GK seems to have used the more complex 4-strand technique. I tried for about an hour to braid the wires by trial-and-error, and I basically threw in the towel in frustration. I had to actually Google how to braid. But once you've done it a bit, you get the hang of it, the pattern just repeats.
For 3-wire:
-pink (on far left) over both black, then under blue
-both black (now on far left) over blue (now in middle), then under pink
-blue (now on far left) over pink (now in middle), then under both black
Attached is a wondrous rendition of my technique, gotta love my Paintshop skillz. When braiding, you have to be careful about the length that you cut the wires, because you never know how much you'll need, as it depends on how tight you braid them. So, I did the braiding until I was all the way to the connector, then and ONLY then did I cut the wires. I cut them about midway of the length of the Molex connector, as that's approximately how far inside the wires would go into the Molex when finished soldering. I also didn't strip the wires until I cut them, and I stripped them so they were such that the bare wires would not be seen much outside of the connector. I had to tape the wires up tightly before doing the above steps, as everything would unravel as I cut & stripped the wires. Only when the metal Molex ends were reattached and soldered on, did I untape everything, and made sure that I was inserting the Molex ends into the correct outside holes of the connector. Shorting out a drive would be bad news, I think.
After the wires were untaped, I lifted the pair of metal barbs out of each Molex connector, then slipped the wires into place.
The pics show the wires, taped up and just before getting soldered to the metal Molex connector ends, a before & after pic of an existing Ultra wire set, and my modded braided set. And lastly, a pic of how it looks under UV light---this is gonna be pimpin' when it's done! And if anyone tells me to "hide my wires" (like some putz asked Glitterkill), I'll give 'em a swift cyber-kick to the derriere.
