DIY stainless steel strapping and banding tensioning tool
Stainless steel strapping and banding
Everybody knows tie-wraps for holding items together. However, there is also a metal variant, which is much stronger. One of those is the Band-It Jr. Smooth ID preformed clamp. A special tensioning tool is required and this cost a lot of money, especially when it is needed just a couple of times. In this case you can use the DIY metal locking tie tool which I describe here.
These parts are required to build the tool:
- Steel angle bar
- Locking pliers
- Bolt and nut M8
- Bolts and nuts M4, the heads are made flat
- Cable ties
DIY stainless steel strapping and banding tensioning tool
Rotate the bolt to tension the metal band
Note that the Band-It Jr. clamps have to be used double wrapped.
Bend the tool 90 degrees to lock the clamp
The clamp is ready
Roller ball metal-locking ties
The tool is also suitable for roller ball metal-locking ties. However these ties suffer from slip back, whereby the tension disappears when the tensioning tool is released; this is no problem when used as cable ties. This is an image of my first tensioning tool:
DIY stainless steel roller ball cable tie tensioning tool