Your wire strippers are your yellow-handled and scissor-like tool. They can be used to cut wire to length and, once properly adjusted, they can be used to strip (remove) insulation from ends of wire.
In this building block I will show you how to adjust your wire strippers and how to set up power rail jumpers on your breadboard.
Required parts
- wire strippers
- breadboard
- wire pack (hookup wire — white box)
If you have a wire kit, you will need to unwrap the wire spools in the box — the plastic goes on and on and on and on and on. Please recycle it. Once each spool is unwrapped, pass the end of each wire color through the box slot and close the box again.
If you are viewing this post-pandemic, lengths of solid core wire are available in class and in the makerSpace.
You also need to adjust your wire strippers so that they can properly remove insulation. Watch the video below to see how it’s done.
Adjusting and Using Wire Strippers
You can jump to 1:49 to learn how to adjust your wire strippers.
Please note there is a purposeful use of a butter knife in this video — normally this would never be promoted. However, the video was made during the pandemic and people could not go shopping of they didn’t have a tool- so we had to have back-up strategies. In general – always use the right tool for the job – its safer.
If it all goes sideways — remember — you have candy.