Talk:Line splice

Splicing wires

The instructions (which really don't belong in a Wikipedia article – WP:HOWTO) tell me I am going to twist the wires together before removing the insulation. Really?. Then, after twisting together, and possibly soldering, I am going to place a sleeve over the joint. How exactly do I do that? Do I go half a mile up to the next junction box and then push the sleeve all the way down the cable? SpinningSpark 16:10, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Armoured cable

I came to this article because there is a link to Wiktionary in transatlantic telegraph cable. There was a famous cockup with splicing this cable mid-Atalantic. The link to "splice" goes to Wiktionary and I thought there should be something better on Wikipedia so I didn't have to explain the details of the problem in-article. Armoured cable splicing should be here but isn't, and if it is on Wikipedia, it's somewhere very obscure. SpinningSpark 16:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

A splice or splicing?

I think that a line splice is a connection, not a method, which is called "splicing". By the way, is splicing a special method that makes a splice? Can two lines be correctly connected without splicing? If so, then what would be the name of such a connection - just "connection", not a "splice"? 85.193.228.103 (talk) 00:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

This article is too specific, yes. Every usage I've seen, a splice would be any method of directly twisting the wires together without the benefit of a specialized connector. Spliced wires are connected, the spice is a connection. I think using a wire nut would still count as a splice, since the connection is still primarily by twisting together the wire. The electrical usage would derive from rope-making terms. Fiber-optics is much more recent and is drawing analogies from telecom use of copper cabling, even though splicing optical fiber looks nothing like splicing rope.

In particular with fiber optics, if both ends go in a fancy machine and out comes a joined fiber, that's a splice. If two optical fibers are separately seated in a connector (e.g. LC) and just plugged in, that's a connection but not a splice.

Or to put it another way, a splice comes together because someone held both ends in their hands at some point and made a splice. Connectors work because both ends got a connector put on them, possibly by different people at different points in time, and they fit together and just work because both conform to the same technical spec. 98.245.24.168 (talk) 01:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)