I know there are already existing threads about this but I was not able to find a clear answer to my question. Our team is trying to use surgical tubing for a feeder to transport balls from the bottom of the tank storing them to the shooter on top. We tried several ways to connect the surgical tubing, wires and zip ties interfere the spinning, and duct tape or electric tape is not strong and durable enough. Is there a good way to connect the two ends of the surgical tubing? We do not have urethane welding kits and ordering it will take too much time. Thank you.
While I strongly recommend using polycord rather than surgical tubing (you can use any heat–a heat gun, a butane torch, whatever, to melt the ends and then squish them together, trimming off the excess when you’re done–you don’t need a fancy “welding kit”), the primary method we’ve used to form surgical tubing into continuous belts back when we did such things was to insert flexible wire that just fits inside into the junction and then zip tie down on the wire as hard as possible on both ends.
It can’t handle all that much tension, and it’s not how I’d ever do things now that I know better, but for low-torque applications it might get you through.
Not possible with surgical tubing, it’s not like plastics where it melts. When heated it will start by sweating a thick sticky black tar-like substance, and eventually it all melts into this kind of mess. Once this happens it only slightly solidifies back together, and is left as a sticky mess. Ends will not stick together.
He was referencing polycord regarding the heating of the ends to melt them together, not surgical tubing.
For surgical tubing, using the flexible wire or even something like a very small size bolt with a nut on the end that will friction fit into the tube, put each end of the tube over the bolt head & nut, then zip tie each so that in order to pull off it would have to pull the zip tie over the bolt/nut. Something like this maybe(?):
tube – bolt head – zip tie – tube end – tube end – zip tie – nut – tube
To be honest surgical tubing is a pain in the butt; we used to use thin wire to puncture a whole in each piece of tubing then twist them together. Keep in mind that surgical tubing WILL stretch a good bit during competition if not attached securely. I would try to get a hold of some polycord. We bought 40 ft. of polycord from these guys for 0.61 a foot and flat rate shipping and they had it here in 2-3 days. Polycord is more durable and able to be fused together.
Link of who we used below.
http://superiorbands.com/polycord.html
Thank you all for those helpful replies. I think we will try to use the poly cord urethane.
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For connecting surgical tubing, I’ve found that poking a small hole close to each end will allow you to connect them with a small zip-tie. I haven’t encountered a problem with the ends breaking in this setup.
I would second everyone else’s recommendations of using round polycord instead of surgical tubing.
One trick I’ve found, if you must do this, is for the right ID of surgical tubing, a short run of pneumatic tubing is a perfect press-fit into each end of surgical. This holds it together nicely, perhaps with some aid from a thin zip tie on each end if you’re nervous about that.