Sleeving a Fan with Expandable Sleeving

Introduction

You probably have seen expandable sleeving used on power supplies and fans for a while. Now that you are trying to customize your rig or tidy the inside up you are thinking about trying it out. But how do you do it?

Today I will show you how to sleeve a CPU fan with expandable sleeving. The same principles can be applied to any kind of wiring in your PC.

Materials Needed

To do this project you will need a fan of your choice (or other object to sleeve).


You will also need a length of expandable sleeving appropriate for the task in the right diameter, some heatshrink tubing in a slightly larger diameter, and some electrical tape. I’ll be using 1/4" sleeving and some 5/16” tubing for this task. You can also find the sleeving in lots of different colors, so you can find one to match your color scheme.

Tools Needed

The tools required for this are

• a lighter
• a pair of scissors
• a small jeweler’s type screwdriver (if that is not available, you can use a straightened paper-clip).

Identify the Wiring

This is the most important step, so don’t skip it. If you are going to remove the wires from the connector you need to know what order to put them back in. At this point you can draw a pic on paper, or print out one of the pictures below. Usually, the connector will have a “1” or an arrow on it to denote pin one, and this one will be black (ground). The second wire in the middle will be the red power wire, and the third wire (if available) will be either yellow or white for the RPM monitor.