The Hunt for a Silicone USB Cable That Survives a Soldering Iron
Searching for the best silicone USB cable
After an openterface cable melted on contact with his Pinecil soldering iron, the author tests four silicone USB-C cables for heat resistance, feel, speed, and price. The Grtoed cable passes the heat test and offers USB 3 speeds but feels plasticky; the LISEN and toocki cables feel great but only support USB 2.0; the Thzzhnno melts. None check all the boxes, so the search continues.
I expect genuine high quality silicone to be heat resistant enough to survive a nick from my soldering iron without immediately burning or melting.
- pseudohadamard
Just beware that an awful lot of "silicone" cabling coming from China is actually overplasticized PVC, particular cabling used in instrument probes. It feels like silicone until it starts getting stiff while at the same time outgassing plasticizer like crazy, or you touch it with a soldering iron or similar. I would expect most or even all of the cat-ran-across-the-keyboard Amazon brands to be overplasticized PVC, not silicone (hint: Use the Knockoff plugin for Chromefox, https://github.com/Shpigford/knockoff, which will warn you for stuff that's sold on Temu West, aka.Amazon, it's warning on almost all of the pseudo-brands listed in the article).
I've also run into way too much cabling that's CCA or even CCS. Garbage on the outside, garbage on the inside.
- tansanrao
Not very sure of heat resistance, but I’ve been very happy with a bunch of LTTStore TrueSpec cables.
- Terretta
This article recommending scrabble letter brands seems sketchy.
Anker offers lovely soft silicone sheathed USB-C cables, in black or white and many lengths. They perform for data and do not get stiff or discolor. Our office specifies these unless TB4+ is required.