Idea for a new hand tool: Automatic Wire Twisting Pliers | Hacker News Reader

Idea for a new hand tool: Automatic Wire Twisting Pliers

docs.sweeting.me

39 pointsnikisweeting64 comments

Maybe use a small rebar wire twister with the hook replaced by pliers. Something similar to this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExFB-mbvt9k

These things need to be fast because it's usually done by piece workers.

There are smaller versions used to tie up sacks also.

Thats a good idea. Ideally I want something that doesn't have to apply much tension on the wires, but a smaller version with the right pitch angle on its internal threads might work.

The traditional(?) version of that tool[1] could also maybe work if you are allowed to make a loop of the wires for twisting. The tool itself is just a hook on a angled axle that rotates in the handle. It's called 'surrauskoukku' in finnish, not sure about the english name

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1BJQorsaCQ

The wire twisting pliers in the first picture are used for lock wire, not electrical wire and they are very good at that specific task. Used in industries such as aviation to prevent movement/rotation of a fastener or a part such as a screw on oil filter.

Yeah but they they're usually too big for the work I have in mind, and not nearly as smooth as a potential pump-action equivalent.

Yea one of the flaws of traditional safety wire twisting tools is their size and inability to get into really tight spaces. The solution in the article still seems too big. I'd buy something like it but only if it was the size of a small ratchet.

Yeah it's hard to depict when there's no existing examples, I was imagining it should be something as small as a pair of side cutters or small pliers. I tried ChatGPT image generation and it failed miserably haha.

It makes sense that an LLM wouldn't be able to draw a tool that doesn't yet exist.

A modified version of a wire wrapping gun might work: https://uk.farnell.com/metcal/g200-r3278/wire-wrap-tool-manu...

With one of these in it: https://www.amazon.com/Neepanda-Connector-Accessories-Simult...

Great idea, this is the closest thing I've seen yet! I've seen wire wrap circuits before but never seen this particular tool.

I would advise against using this for electrical work. See the internet for "wago vs twisting".

Chicken wire, crafting, etc. sure.

You're not twisting electrical wires together to make an electrical connection, it's just to keep a bundle of wires together.

Cable lacing keeps them together without any twisting.

The twisting is in fact part of the electrical connection. On a good wire nut connection the wire nut is just insulating the bundle and if it falls off the bundle is still secure.

> On a good wire nut connection the wire nut is just insulating the bundle and if it falls off the bundle is still secure.

The problem is, a good wire nut is impossible to distinguish from a bad wire nut. A transparent Wago (or its clones) are virtually foolproof to install and to inspect.

No. If you use a good wire nut (i.e. use a good brand, have experience, and never reuse a wire nut), the nut itself makes the electrical connection. A good wire nut application will never fall off. If it does, you didn't attach it right. I concede this is a function of experience and it's not foolproof.

All that having been said, I still pre-twist because it helps keep the wires together which makes it easier to put the nut on in the first place -- especially if you're connecting more than two wires.

Edit: One point I left out is that if you don't pre-twist, correct attachment means you should put the nut on with enough tension that the nut itself causes the wires to twist together. This hurts your fingers if you do it all day, so using a wire nut twisting tool is recommended.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

You need to twist or otherwise adhere wires together before soldering them, e.g. when using heat shrink solder sleeve, unless you've some other way to hold the wires in place.

There's places where you can substitute wago, but often not, e.g. when working with limited space, e.g. repairing a broken wire harness in a car, or similar.

> There's places where you can substitute wago, but often not, e.g. when working with limited space, e.g. repairing a broken wire harness in a car, or similar.

Don't fear! The wago inline splicing connector is here!

https://www.wago.com/global/electrical-interconnections/disc...

I knew about that, actually. It's way too big still for some uses, and I'm guessing won't deal well with anything that repeatedly lightly pulls on the wire (e.g. a trunk hinge). But for some other cases it's great.

Heat shrink solder connectors are the thing to use in this case:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B073RMRCC3

Waterproof, tension proof, will handle more current than the wire itself, hard to install wrong, and very reliable (ie. No fires)

Why would you even use twisting as connection method for professional work (i.e. not when you just don’t have any proper tools around)? Various quick connectors like Wago exist for temporary connections, and for permanent ones handheld hydraulic crimping presses are not that expensive.

Plenty of reasons, not all electrical work is professional, and even then it's not just for electrical work. It's useful for chicken wire, cable management ties, making long twisted pairs, etc.

Earths are to be connected to a single point, not multiple terminals of a Wago block or similar, in the UK at least. Twisting is not afaik a requirement, but it's common, and adds to the security of it. (At least, as long as the solid core hasn't been twisted and untwisted repeatedly and near the point of breaking.)

OP appears to be doing it to make a fatter gauge cable out of smaller ones though?

You mean that the earth cable should run uninterrupted as a single wire from the connector of the device to the power cabinet?

Take a ceiling rose light fitting for example; you have:

    - twin core & Earth line
    - twin core & Earth to next fitting (or back to cabinet to complete the ring)
    - live to switch & switched live return
    - flex live & neutral (+ Earth if not double insulated) to light fitting

those 2-3 Earths obviously need to be electrically connected, and that is not supposed to be done with a multipoint terminal block. They are supposed to be under a single screw in the light fitting say, or twisted together & sleeved.

I believe it's thought that it reduces the chance of failure - one connection to check vs. a terminal block of three 'connections' where it's easy with solid core to think that they're secure when actually the middle one isn't, it's just roughly prevented from slipping out by the stiffness of the others, and potentially isn't a good electrical connection.

The UK electric code is wild.

A ceiling rose light fixture in Finland has three wires: - Earth - Neutral - Live

It can be like that, it's not a requirement, but once you know what's going on it's actually quite convenient to have the chaining. Not if you're trying to stuff it all in a small fitting that wasn't designed for it, but otherwise.

I suspect Finnish spotlights are similar - they run in a chain not all individually to the switch? So only the last one has just the feed and nowhere to go?

Difference is in the UK we have 'ring' circuits, where the 'end' as it were goes back to the consumer unit (power cabinet). It's mostly a post-war hangover: if the load is assumed fairly even then it means you can use half the wire diameter vs. not having the return, which was thought with typical and logical layout would mean less cable overall, since the 'end' would already be back around the other side close to the CU again. It has some safety advantage too, but AIUI it's slowly fading out of vogue for new installations and it will likely end eventually. (Some critique it that with modern patchy load distribution it actually now ironically requires more copper than the equivalent radial circuit, and probably not post-war level but copper's expensive again.)

> Twisting is not afaik a requirement, but it's common, and adds to the security of it.

Not clear what sort of connection you are referring to here? And how twisting improves it? But I'd be surprised if there wasn't better option available

Wire nuts, likely. The directions on the last box I bought say that twisting is allowed but not required. I would think the reason to twist is to improve the mechanical connection, not the electrical one.

It should make it more resilient to grabbing two wires and pulling in opposite directions. Which shouldn't happen in practice anyway, but, you know.

Regardless of how you feel about wire nuts, if you're in the US, your house is probably full of them.

No, I've never seen them (not that I'm an electrician, but nor for sale) in the UK.

To a single point as I said, I'm not really sure how else to describe. Could be ring terminals crimped on and under a single screw, that would be better. But twisted cores under screw beats not twisted under screw - even just twisted and no screw (as is common especially in say light fittings that are double insulated/no metal to begin with, no Earth point) is probably better.

So screw/stud termination. Yes, ring or spade(/fork) lug would be much better than bare wires, twisted or not. As I understand it, crimping is almost always the preferred way to terminate/connect wires.

Yep, there's often not a lug though, and they'll either be twisted and flapping about, or in the (same side of, if applicable) a single terminal; in the latter case I would think twisting is better than not, or better than separate straight crimps. Certainly not worse.

It was just an example of when it's done, I was never trying to say it's the absolute best, no other way.

My electrician (UK) was recently very upset at use of twisting in sockets - made uncoupling them (to bisect the ring and thereby find where a fault was occurring) very time consuming.

Why are you saying that wagos are for temporary connections?

This seems to be some sort of meme existing in the US electricians mindspace, which prefer use of cheaper wirenuts on twisted wire. Wagos are approved for permanent connections in the whole world.

From what I've heard many electricians are wary because of old poorly designed back-stabbed outlets, thus anything held by a tiny burr & pressure is forever untrustworthy.

* except the polar wastes of Canada! Due to the complex plastic hinging interaction with bitter cold, supposedly they're not approved for use in CA.

As an electrician, do NOT do this. Electrical screwdrivers sometimes already include a wirenut wrench, but the ones that mount on a drill are a joke, and dangerous to wiring. Wires for line voltage especially, need to be well-connected.

This seems to basically already exist. The safety wire twister pliers probably won't have enough leverage for solid core household wiring especially compared to a cordless drill.

Drill Powered Wire Twister and Stripper That Has Gone Viral

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxyTou4pMqQ

I've seen these but I wanted something hand powered for the 24~14awg range.

The target use-case isn't houseold wiring as Wago's or real terminals are better for that anyway. It's more for smaller low-voltage hobby projects, chicken wire, making twisted pairs, etc.

It seems like toward the smaller end of that range but a wire wrap tool with a scaled version of that bit might be along the lines of what you're after. Wire wrap is meant to go around a long relatively rigid pin as the host for the wrapped wire.

https://jonard.com/network-it/wire-wrap-tools

Also I've had good success with just chucking multiple strands wire into a regular drill to make twisted pairs when needed.

Alibaba has all sorts of wire twisting machines, tools and pliers...

I've looked through many of them in the past, but none quite fit in the niche I'm aiming for.

Sounds like this person just needs a wire nut twister attachment for their power drill tool.

Professional electricians use something like this to finish the outlet boxes.

https://www.amazon.com/T-Line-Twisting-BOWT-001-Power-Access...

As mentioned in other comments below, the whole point is that I don't want a big unwieldy tool, it should be the size of the gun-type automatic wire strippers.

You can get very small drills, I have a USB powered one with enough torque to twist wires.

That's not a bad idea, I have a small electric screwdriver that could work. What I really want is something with a spinning head angled 90º facing forward though, like the gun-type automatic wire strippers [1]. It's a lot easier to hold a trigger-type interface and reset it quickly than a screwdriver-grip-type interface.

[1] Like this: https://docs.monadical.com/uploads/88cd3519-84a4-413e-b266-1...

Just put this wire nut tightening tool into a 1/4" multi-bit screwdriver. I used that a lot when I was doing electrical work.

I'm sure I saw a method of making a circuit that used twisting instead of soldering. Apparently it was used quite a bit in the days gone by.

Anyone knows what that night have been?

Are you thinking of "Wire wrap construction" perhaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap

Yes! Thanks!

Probably not what you're talking about, but everyone should know the Lineman's Splice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union_splice

TL;DR: It's a method of joining two wires that won't pull apart under load; the wire will break before the splice comes apart. Add solder, trim any pointy bits, and you have a NASA approved joint.

Looks very similar to knots used to join fishing line, like the blood knot.

Thanks! I had this one and the Wire Wrap somehow linked in my mind but forgotten the name. Must have seen them both described on the same page a long time ago.

I came very close to describing it as "two wires, end to end, with the free end wire-wrapping the opposite wire." :-)

I'm trying this now with 20ga solid core, at least without solder it is still pulling apart even with more then 6 wraps. It could be my technique, still working on it. Thanks.

related, is there a way to automatically tighten nuts from the side?

there are clicky box-end wrenches that you put over a nut, but something like that for an open ended wrench when you come in from the side.

Basically, a ratcheting or powered open ended wrench?

I’ve used the drills clamp to hold the end of stripped wires then twist.

It's called a drill chuck.

Use wago instead of wire nuts.

Why not build a prototype?

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