Cable tie gun - how do they work?

I have one of these and I'm afraid that it won't really solve your problem. You have to manually thread the tie around the cables, thread it back into the machine and tighten it manually. You then trim the tie with the built in cutter.

Although I havn't used mine enough to become proficient, I don't think it offers any advantage over normal cable ties.

The system uses separate tie and locks. The second item is the locks that you need.

Bill

Bod wot spanners my car uses one of these. And swears AT it quite a lot.

AFAICR it's an endless length of the serrated cable tie plus double headed clips. You feed the cable off the drum and through a length of clips. The protruding end of the cable is pulled out and fed round the object to be tied and back through the leading clip. You then pull the drum end of the cable back to tighten the job and finally use the cutter to trim the cable off the spool.

Does any of that make sense?

So you need tool + cable + clips to do the job.

It's an attractive idea but you still have to fiddle about poking the free end back into the snout of the machine. And there has to be space to get the snout close to the work piece for best tightening.

Richard

On the one I've got I'd say it is easier to thread the end in - as you can have the initial loop as large as you like. And not so easy to put it in the wrong way round. You also don't need pliers to tighten the tie and cutters to cut the spare off - it's all you need for the job. The finished tie looks slightly different to a normal one, since the ends of the tie go into the collet from the same side. Also I've only seen the tie rolls in white. Mine is just a cheap DIY one and not the same as the Screwfix offering. Somewhere like RS components would be a better bet for a heavy duty one.

in a previous job I used to go through hundreds of cable ties a day. sometimes over a thousand in a week. those cable tie guns are not nearly as good or as fast as your hands and fingers.

RT

Thanks. I'd worked out the bit about "separate tie and locks", not at all obvious from the ScrewFix descriptions but another site clarified things a bit.

OK, thanks all, I'll just buy another pack of cable ties then. ... and probably not wear my bifocals for tying them.

You get some like this: