Introduction: Capillary Tubing Support Guides..
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About: My situation keeps me a home at great deal of the time and as such, I generally have a lot of time on my hands. That said, a while back I swore an oath to myself that I would not be 'that guy' that lay on his …
I ran across a situation where I needed to provide a rigid support system for a drip line made of capillary tubing. The biggest issue was not to kink the tubing as it is rather fragile. Fig1 shows an O.D. of just 1.57mm and Fig2 gives a good view from the end-on. What I needed was something that would allow for some movement yet keep the tubing from getting kinked or knocked about.
Step 1: Desperation
Out of sheer desperation & after having kinked the line more times than I'd like to admit, I opted to route the tubing through some eye screws till a better solution came along. Then it occurred to me that if I soldered a bit of larger tubing into that eye screw, it would provide the support needed while allowing the capillary tubing to flex a bit.
Step 2: Kitchen Brazing..
If you haven't picked up a creme brulee torch for small brazing jobs & such, you are doing yourself a grave disservice [Fig1]. A while back I picked up a 'hobby pack' of metal tubing shorts [Fig2] at our local HobbyLobby that saved the day on this project.
This instructable is not intended to show anyone how to gas weld so suffice to say, I centered a short bit of tubing in the eye screw & soldered the lot together as neatly as possible. Fig3 shows the end product.
FYI - I picked up a piece of ceramic floor tile [from a trash pile] that has made an excellent heat shield for small hot work jobs. Generally speaking, if it's a small job like this I will put my piece of ceramic tile on the kitchen stove & do my hot work there. Seems to make sense to me - that area of the kitchen is used to seeing some heat so the odds of catching something on fire unintentionally are slim.
This instructable is not intended to show anyone how to gas weld so suffice to say, I centered a short bit of tubing in the eye screw & soldered the lot together as neatly as possible. Fig3 shows the end product.
FYI - I picked up a piece of ceramic floor tile [from a trash pile] that has made an excellent heat shield for small hot work jobs. Generally speaking, if it's a small job like this I will put my piece of ceramic tile on the kitchen stove & do my hot work there. Seems to make sense to me - that area of the kitchen is used to seeing some heat so the odds of catching something on fire unintentionally are slim.
Step 3: Miniature Flaring Tool..
Once the support guides are completed, all there is to do is to screw them in & route the tubing through them. As you may have surmised, opening up the end of this tiny tubing after it has been kinked and broken can be challenging. Luckily I discovered that by using a pair of pointy tweezers, the kinked end could be coaxed open and by giving the tweezers a twist - flare the end of the tubing. So awesome!
