Review on XHF2018 Dual Wall Shrink Tubing by Eric Pavelko

My True Treadmill's front pulley has a small diameter (1.75 inch) and a plastic bushing to increase friction as the belt advances. Over time, this bushing has split and become loose, causing an annoying noise when using the treadmill. The solution to this problem is to remove the remaining plastic wrap, clean the roller and cover it with a piece of heat shrink tubing. The 2 inch XHF hose was selected and supplied by Revain in one day. . The heat gun was enough to set the pipe on the treadmill roller, though not without a slight waviness in the finished work. Once assembled with the heat shrink coated roller, the treadmill runs great and is much quieter than before. XHF heat shrink tubing has performed well for this application and I am very pleased with the cost effective result. The small waves found in the result do not seem to affect the performance of the treadmill, but without them the work would be more accurate. Here are a few ideas that can help reduce the risk of wrinkling: Shrink tubing flattens out - creating creases in the middle between existing creases can help the tubing sit more evenly on the bead before shrinking; Gradually squeeze the tubing along its length, starting in the middle like I did and squeezing that part firmly before moving to the ends. quiet months. The sleeve previously heat-shrinked onto the treadmill roller was loose and could easily slide up and down the roller - still snug, but no longer snug on the roller (that's the "sticky" nature of this heat-shrink). tube should be. This small gap between the tube and the roller must be the source of the noise. (This is where I missed the trick: I had to try to reattach the sleeve by applying heat). I've tried using stock 1.75 diameter heat shrink tubing with no success, but couldn't get it more than a few inches across the roller before the friction became too great to pull it further. So back to the original 2" heat shrink tubing. Luckily, the roller was less than 24 inches long, so I had enough material left over from the original 4 foot section to make another roller cover. I sanded the surface of the treadmill roller to accommodate it to make it rougher, and cleaned them well with isopropyl alcohol. tried smoothing out the tube to create a crease halfway from the original crease in stacks of books; it didn't do much to add a new permanent crease. I have mine Shrink technique changed a bit: starting at one end, I focused on shrinking the parts of the tubing that protruded the most from the bead first (caused by the crease of the flattened tubing), after which I shrunk those parts on opposite sides of the roller , I heated the area between them.Using this method I was able to leave the hose with little to no the waves or bumps on the reel, a big improvement over the first attempt. I used a Dewalt heat gun at 400 degrees F to shrink and the process took about an hour to shrink at around 210 F but that would have been an incredibly slow process. I've been toying with the idea of "curing" the pipe some more in my kitchen, but caution prevailed: there is a ribbed plug on one end of the reel that is pressed against the drive pulley, and this plug seems to come off to compose plastic. I would be very sad if the oven curing melted or warped this lid. It should be so. I hope I don't write about attempt number three any time soon.