discussion / Biologging  / 25 February 2021

Heat shrinking "stuff" to collars

Hello all,

I wonder if anyone has experience they would share on heat shrinking "stuff" to animal telemetry collars.

I guess some types of heat shrink will be better suited to withstand UV radiation and wear and tear.

Cheers,




Hi Lars,

I'm currently heat shrinking transmitters to make a simple pouch to hold a transmitter to an ear tag. Because I want to prevent damage to the ear as much as possible, I figured it was desirable to have a material that would break before the ear does but I have not put this to the test. Two units deployed so far without an issue except for an intermittent fault with one of the transmitters. Hopefully not caused by the heatshrink. I think the biggest issue with heat-shrinking to a collar is that the heatshrink goes hard (at least the stuff I used) and will pull the collar toward the shape of the hard object you are attaching. A bit of preplanning and adding the desired shape before applying the heat should resolve that.