surgical tubing

[marcros]

I have seen several references on American forums for using surgical tubing to clamp items together- particularly odd shaped things. It seems very expensive on ebay- £5 a metre +

Is there another term for it or does anybody know of a cheap source?

 

[KevM]

We used to use surgical tubing for bungeeing spare demand valves to the side of dive cylinders and myriad other uses - it does always seem to be expensive (unless you know somebody in the medical profession) - we used to refer to it as latex tubing (some freaky things turn up on Ebay when you start using latex in your search terms...), it's also used for replacement catapult bands, but at quite inflated prices.

One thing that might be worth considering are some of the knock off Theraband resistance tubes used for physio/exercise - I've seen them in Tescos/Argos etc for not much. For some projects large rubber bands can be useful - what size items are you trying to clamp?

 

[marcros]

Boxes which are 300mm x 200mm. I am open to other options- I am designing the process for batch production at the moment- that seemed to be a useful clamping method.

 

[KevM]

Have you tried these http://www.axminster.co.uk/nobex-framing-cord-clamp I find them very good, if a little fiddly to set up in the first place - they're expensive for what they are but I bought mine for pennies a few years ago. There's really very little to them, should be possible to knock up a knock off.

Edit: For home made some 3mm shock cord and cord-locks would do the springy bit with some wine corks or similar for corner protectors?
Edit 2: The nobex is cheaper here: http://www.quality-woodworking-tools.co ... Tools.html

 

[AndyT]

You can make any size rubber band by cutting an old inner tube. The more oblique the angle of your cut, the bigger the band.

 

[mailee]

Andy beat me to it. I have often used inner tubes cut into bands for this sort of job. :wink:

 

[marcros]

I will try that I think.

 

[xy mosian]

I don't know the nature of you box marcos, but this may help.
When I worked in the low end hi fi industry (cheap hi fi with foreign names ) the task was managed with hot melt glue. The method ran like this:- Tape the outside of the box, folding mitres, pva glue to the joints, clamp in squaring jig and hot melt the inside of the mitres. About 20 seconds later the box was released. Gradually we opened the mitre a little to get some hot melt in the joint, this gave it more grab surface.
This is clearly no good if the inside of the box is to be visible.

HTH xy