I am working on an outdoor LED lighting project where I'm making my own rope lights to hold up to the elements. I am using waterproof LED strips which are surrounded in a plastic "jelly-like" material and I am enclosing them in clear, plastic tubing. This means that I intend to slide the LED strips inside the plastic tubing and it's a slow go because I'm getting plastic-on-plastic rubbing. To put this in context, the strips are 6 feet long and about 3/8" wide and I'm putting them in tubing with a 1/2" inner diameter.
So, I think I need some sort of lubricant to make sliding them in easier but I also need it to not leave a residue so that it won't interfere with the clarity of the tubing and wont affect the electronics of the LED strips. Any suggestions?
Best Answer
Polydimethylsiloxane meets almost all your requirements. PDMS is non-conductive, optically clear, inert, non toxic, non flammable, and extremely slippery. It's typically an ingredient in silicone oil, but you can probably buy it separately somewhere too.
Other than PDMS, mineral oil would also work. Much easier to get too.
There will definitely be reside, if you want to call it that though. Neither substance will evaporate, so it's going to be there forever. On the other hand, that property will help you disassemble them if you need to repair it in the future.
Maybe just use as little as possible? Probably just on the contact surfaces.