How Much Do Shrink Sleeves Shrink?

How Much Do Shrink Sleeves Shrink?

This question can be asked multiple ways:

- What is the shrink ratio for Raychem / Covalence shrink sleeves?

- How much do you shrink sleeves shrink?

- When a shrink sleeve is fully recovered, how much will it have shrunk?

- How much shrink is built in to your sleeves?

     They all basically mean the same thing though.  The answer (as always it seems) is simple...but not too simple...  

     It depends.  When considering our pipeline field joint coatings (products like WPCT, WPC100M, DIRAX, HTLP60, WPC120, etc) the shrink is going to be something like 28% plus or minus 3%.  So, when attempting to figure if a shrink sleeve can be used with a certain coupling size or can be used with bell and spigot pipe or can be used to bridge some kind of a major step down; we are always forced to consider the worst case scenario:  25%.

     When looking at some of our high expansion products (Caseal and Flangeseal as a couple of examples) we consider that those products will shrink ~60%.

     When looking at something like Flexclad (our heat shrinkable tape) we figure 20% (it isn't built to shrink as much).  

     Looking into some of our electrical products (WCSM / MWTM / etc) we generally expect a 4:1 shrink ratio (if a tube is supplied with a 4" ID; it would shrink down to a 1" ID).

     As you can see, we have a wide range of different material types with different shrink amounts built into them.  No matter what your application, I'm confident we can come up with something for you!