Braided vs Extruded Sleeving: Pros and Cons
It is sometimes confusing knowing when to use a braided sleeve over an extruded sleeve, this guide will hopefully make the differences clear to enable proper selection.
What is extruded sleeving?
Extruded sleeves are made from polymers and are generally hot extruded using screw type extrusion equipment, the polymer starts off as granules with a pigment added for colour. These are mixed in a hopper, passed through an extruder and pushed through a pin and die mould, to produce the sleeve in the required dimensions. This is then cooled, cut and wound, normally in an inline process.
The exceptions to this process are Silicones and PTFE tubes and sleeves, which are cold extruded using a screw extruder and hydraulic press respectively, and are heat treated or “sintered†as a secondary process after extrusion.
What is braided sleeving?
As a typical example we are going to look at the process for fibre glass braided sleeves.
The glass filaments are twisted together to form a strong single yarn and wound onto bobbins. These are then placed onto a braiding machine, the amount of carriers varies depending on size and construction and this machine then forms the basic braid.
The braid is then heat treated to remove fibre barbs and then goes through a coating/impregnation and curing process either by an ultra-violet light process or a number of passes through a heated oven tower depending on the coating/impregnation used.
The pros and cons of extruded sleeving
Pros: Extruded sleevings are generally low cost, have high dielectric strength and are easy to make in a large variety of sizes and colours.
Cons: it often has poor abrasion resistance and has less tensile strength and lower mechanical endurance.
The pros and cons of braided sleeving
Pros: Braided sleevings have excellent mechanical strength and high abrasion resistance and good flexibility in most sizes.
Cons: They are generally more expensive as it is much slower to make, does not have such accurate dimension tolerances and can’t be made in very long continuous lengths, commonly 100 metres.
Conclusion
When deciding which type of sleeve to use the main criteria are temperature, dielectric strength and mechanical properties. Other features include flexibility and dimensional requirements.
Hopefully this article has helped in understanding the differences between these two methods of producing sleeves and our experts at Croylek are always happy to help you in making the correct decision.