Shortening wires

[onelegout]

Hey all
Ive just finished (kinda) my first modded case.
nothing special: a window, a purple neon, some LED fans, glow-in-the-dark drive cable, another glowing orange cable. The only special thing about it is that I installed 2 small speakers into the window!

The problem im having is with my power wires, they're cluttering the whole thing up and making it look crappy, I tried hiding them away but theres just too many of them! Is there any way of shortening them to the exact size that I need so that they're not all in bundles?
I have no soldering iron :(
Peace
H

[Malignus Wingnut]

I think the obvious way would be to cut the wires one by one, removing the middle section of the wire that you don't want (if there's a connector on one end you obviously have to save that), strip the ends of the remaining wire parts, twist together, use a wire screw.

Really you should buy a soldering iron. A cheap one can be ~20 bucks. Then you could strip the remaining wires, fit a piece of shrink tube over one half, solder together, slide shrink tube, and..well, shrink!

Good luck.

[onelegout]

aah ok, so twisting them together would work ok? I mean I didnt think it would handle that amount of power v well if loads of wires were just twisted together! Imma ask for a soldering iron for christmas hah!

[richmandudeus]

I had a friend who improvised on all his power wires cause he though maybe he'll need them in the future. He cut all the end of the molex's off, heat tube shrunk the ends of each wire, and connected the head of a squiddy centinal from the matrix moveis to one end. He took some old model parts to stick at the ends of the wire and painted them dark grey. Now it looks like there is a squiddy trapped in his case with its arms positioned as if it were trying to get out. He has no cooling problems either (water cooled) as far as air flow. Just a thought. Eyes were glowing and everything.... :D

[crazybillybob]

The othe thought is if your going to be modding hard core or doing more Electronics in the future. Buy a crimper this way you can crimp those nice little pins on the wire then slip them into the plastice molex housing (very clean look! and it handles the power fine!) Check places like Jameco Electronics (http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1) or Digi-Key (http://www.digikey.com/) Parts express (http://www.partsexpress.com/) Most good Electronics parts stores sell pin crimpers for a good price. It also means that you can Make all types of custom power cables 2 headed 4 headed what ever you need. (just remeber to order pins when you order the crimpers!)

Good Luck,
Crazybillybob

[onelegout]

Cheers for the advice all :) well I've decided now that I desperately need to upgrade my actual hardware before spending any more money on modding! (Im stuck right now with a 1.35Ghz processor, radeon9100 and 512mb of ram!) So I better get saving hahah!
Peace
H