I bought my wire from Doug's source. Good service, allways returned calls/emails, etc. Took 3-1/2 weeks to get.

...and because I built a 5 x 10 table, I used 275' of cable.

Here is another source on the Helukabel cable.

http://www.hitechcontrols.com/cable_index.htm

They order once a week and have a three week turnaround. I spoke to Jim at hitech and explained what I would be using the cable for and he suggested that if a UL label was not necessary then it would be cheaper to use the following type cable.

Ed, it would appear that these cables have a bigger outside diameter - ie. they are "bulkier" and therefore stiffer. Keep an eye on your cable chain radius and the minimum bending radius allowed for the cable.

Thanks Gerald, The pvc coated cable does have a smaller diameter and a smaller bend radius. I will see what he has in the pvc.

Ed, if the difference in price is significant, I would probably use the cheaper, thicker one.....even if it bends a little tighter than spec'ed. In our router application we a putting relatively few bends per minute onto that cable.

I love the fact that the cores are different colors. The cable I used had all black cores with tiny numbers written on them. It was a challenge to read them sometimes. These would be much easier to use.

I have found that prices can vary widely depending where you are from. I had a company up here in Canada, actually in Saskatoon, SK quote me a price of $1500.00 for 263 feet of Olflex 115CY cable.

I checked with another U.S. based source for the Helukable wire which as far as I know has only minor differences with the Olflex, and they quoted me about $500.00 for the same length.

I can't explain it, but price gouging come to mind.

John

Hey Doug, do you have the heukabel part #'s that you used on your cable that you have the prices listed for? I just got an email with prices:eek::eek:
Jim must be pricing something altogether different. The non sheilded prices were about what you have shown. Here is the email:

Ed,
Listed as follows are your pricing for the shielded products that parallel the previous quote.

PN-89960 JZ 602 RC-CY 200 ft. $4.00/ ft.+$25.00 cut charge (200 ft.)
PN-89978 JZ 602 RC-CY 40 ft. $4.33/ ft.+$25.00 cut charge or rest length @ 15mtr.(49 ft.)
PN-49643 SUPERTRONIC-C-PVC 50 ft. $1.41/ ft.+$25.00 cut charge or rest length @ 24mtr. (79 ft,)
PN-49646 SUPERTRONIC-C-PVC 100 ft. $1.59/ ft.+$25.00 cut charge or rest length @ 29mtr. (95 ft.)

Best Regards,


Jim Shiels

Inside Technical Sales



Hi-Tech Controls

14853 E. Hindsdale Ave. Suite D

Centennial, CO 80112 USA



Phone: 303-680-5159 / 800-677-8942

Fax: 303-680-5344

Ed,

I'll try to find them for you. I hunted around for quite a while and I don't think you can beat the prices I got for the small quantities we need. Not in the US anyway.

Okay I found out some more usefull info.

The Helukebel JZ-HF-CY application shows to be for robotics and cable trays. I checked with Dennis Holtgrave at Lappusa and also Jim at Hitech controls. Lappusa was a few pennies less for the 7core but Hitech was less on the 4core 18AWG which I will be needing the most of.

listed earlier in this thread, The Helukebel F-CY-JZ cable application is more twards computer cables and doesn't mention robotics or flexibility(other than bend radius) in the pdf sheet. It does cost about .50 per ft less, but IMHO doesn't sound like the correct cable for what we are building.

I ordered the JZ-HF-CY type cable from hi-tech.

The JZ-602-RC-CY rubber coated 4core 18AGW Helukebel was out of my price range at $4 per ft.

Sorry, my time ran out on editing my last post, but the F AND THE HF are for flexible and highly flexible. So I could be wrong about the F-CY-JZ, it could be okay also. it shows to be a 10x bend.

I would be perfectly happy with the F-CY-JZ cable for our low-speed application.

I am in the process of acquiring parts and ran into some wire issues. I've read the information on this thread from beginning to end several times and I've looked around for "flex" wire with braided shield. There is wire sold here that has both braided and foil shield that is substantially cheaper than import Olflex that is recommended. The only problem is – it’s not advertised as "Flex" wire. If I go with the "Flex" wire, it will cost me about 3X more. My question is can I get away with using this wire instead of "Flex" wire? I'll try to get some pictures of this stuff and post it so you can see what I'm talking about in a day or two when I get a sample of this stuff. The price is $1.60 per meter for 4 core 2.0mm stranded wire (Sorry, only metric specs available here in Taiwan). I would imagine the 1.0 mm per core would be cheaper. Has anyone tried wire that is not officially labeled as "flex" cable for robotics/chain application? I'll still post pictures of the stuff I'm talking about but any suggestions or words of wisdom would be appreciated. Thanks.

I am using a "flexible" but not official flex on my machine. I haven't noticed any issues like cracking or otherwise. I did use an 18ga with a very light PVC jacket that has both the braid and foil. Cheap. .40 / ft. For now, everything working fine after 5 months of hard use.

David, the "flexibility" will mainly be decided by the outside diameter and fine coppercstrands inside. We don't need a lot of wall thickness to protect the cable because we enclose the moving cables in chain. Any thin wall cable with fine strands can be considered flexible enough for our application, which actually is a low grade application by "CNC tool" standards. We are not spitting out 200 widgets per minute.

Lots of people have used unscreened cables and they swear by them. However, when interference problems arise, the first suspect is the cable. Consider that the sheer size of the MechMate makes for very long cables, running closely parallel to each other. The guys going problem-free are mostly hobbyists with smallish tables.

If I was on an absolutely tight budget, I might go for unscreened motor cables, but definitely do good screens on the control circuit.

Thank you Sean and Gerald for the reply. I will post a picture of this stuff tomorrow but it has a black pvc shield that is about 1.2 mm thick. I think the next logical question would be, if there is interference, and assuming it does not originate in the carefully shielded control box, what kind of indicators would one expect to see? Would it be missed steps, eratic motor jerks, etc...?

Yes, missed steps and erratic movement.

The most common complaint seems to be a z-slide that decides to dive into the table, and I suppose that gets the most complaints because it is so dramatic! :)

I have had that happen several times :o. I never knew I could have blamed it on machine error ;). Just joking, mine was 100% operator error ..... but if Gerald had spoke up a little earlier :rolleyes:.

:p ^{<-----sticks out tongue}

I'm using what sounds like the same wire (bought it off eBay). I liked it so much I bought some more a 2nd time and then went back a 3rd time and bought all the guy had, enough for about 4 machines (Marc, Gene and another for myself). This is very high quality wire. It's has a braided shield, a Mylar foil shield, and a drain wire. It's 18 awg, 4 conductors (1 of the red ones is 6 conductors), each conductor has about 25 very fine wires making it extremely flexible. I have not had any issues with this wire at all.

Curious...
Does this wire have any identifying names, numbers or marks?

Bill this is the writings on all the wires, it is exactly the same, no variance regardless of wire color. The pictures overlap just a little. All 3 pics are 1 wire.
I did cut up a small piece and 26 small wires make up 1 conductor. I have e-mailed the guy to see if he has gotten any more of this wire.

I found this company (Northwire) and site for the wire...
http://northwire.com/directFFSpecs.php

I haven't checked their price or availability yet...

Hi guys,
What is your opinion on “IGUS chainflex” wires & cables ?
I’d appreciate some feedback & comments!
Robert.

http://www.igus.com/chainflex.asp

Obviously they are professional cables - but are the prices right for you?

IGUS,
make some of the most flexible cables in the world. They quoted on a military job I was doing some engineering work for about 7 years ago. The cable we needed was rather large and needed a small bend radius. They designed a cable that met the criteria flawlessly. Too bad the price was 4 times that of everyone else. :eek: If the budget allows, they will be good cables. :)

Hi Again, Sorry about the delay in posting the picture of the wire. I got tied up over the last several days entertaining family from back home. There are 37 strands per core. Can you guys let me know if this looks ok? The shield is copper but not as tightly woven as the one J.R. Hatcher posted. Any comments or suggestions are welcomed.

Thank you

That looks good - I don't see any problem with it

Gerald, what was the size (gauge) of the cores for the cable between the control box and the VFD (7 core for control signals), I am assuming 0.5 would suffice or would 1.0 be better?

1.0mm² will be no better than 0.5mm² for the VFD control signals.

You didn't get it all, because I just got 300 feet from him. And like you I think the wire is great and not expensive. He sent me a small section of wire before I bought it. He has fast shipping as well. It has a small bending radias and should work fine.

JR,
I noticed from some of your pics that your wire is rated for only 30V. Will that be a problem for your motor drives (are you using higher than 30V for your motors?) ? Or maybe just using it for your limit switch stuff?

Heath I saw that too and figured it wasn't actually the volts the wire can carry because of it's size (20 awg, I posted it as 18 ga. but was told by the supplier that it is really 20 ga.). Think about how small a auto spark plug wire is and it carries something like 10,000 - 20,000 + volts and it's not really wire, years ago they were graphite, not sure nowadays. Besides if it is talking about volts I think it's some kind of weird specification that doesn't apply here. I'm running mine @ 70 volts and it's doing fine. When I connected it to the motors I noticed my wire was much larger (theirs looks to be around 24ga. or even smaller). But thanks for the watchful eye anyway.

PS

Copied this from a website for 20 ga. wire: notice the lowest UL rating (600 volts) compared to the CSA rating (150 volts).

Voltage Rating

• MIL-W-16878E Type B: 600 Volt UL 3265, CSA AWM I A/B FT1: 150 Volt
• MIL-W-16878E Type C: 1000 Volt UL 3266, CSA CL 1252 XLPE: 300 Volt
• MIL-W-16878E Type D: 3000 Volt UL 3271, CSA CL 1251 XLPE: 600 Volt

Specifications

• CSA AWM I A/B FT1
• CSA CL 1251 XLPE
• CSA CL 1252 XLPE
• CSA: 125C, 150, 300, 600 VOLT
• MIL-W-16878E Types B, C and D
• MIL-W-16878E: 105C, 600, 1000, 3000 VOLT
• RoHS Compliant
• UL
• UL AWM Style 3265
• UL AWM Style 3266
• UL AWM Style 3271

Product Description

• Conductor: Stranded Tinned Copper
• Insulation : Radiation Crosslinked Polyolefin (XLPE)

I saw that 36V on the cable, but didn't think it meant the voltage limit on the cable's insulation. I can't believe that any cable would have such a low voltage rating.

JR, the voltage rating of the cable has nothing to do with the copper content. It is an indicator of the quality (and thickness) of the insulation.

JR,
I was not worried about the size of the wire , but rather the insulation covering the wire. You can easily pass thousands of volts through a very small wire, the insulation doesnt stop you from doing this, but it does keep it from arcing and shorting to adjacent wires and metal. The wire size limits the amount of current you can pass without the wire melting. If the insulation on the wire is not capable of supporting the voltage you are passing on it, at some time, the insulation will break down and you will have a short circuit. 30V wire will probably not show a problem right away, but might be a time bomb waiting to go off after some use and aging. There was a picture of a chap on the shopbot forum that almost had his garage burn down due to an electrical problem with his cnc. Just wouldnt want it to happen to one of us.

Regarding the pause and resume:

Why seven core (mentioned on page one of this discussion) cable for the pause/resume/E-stop ? if I get it right, a MM builder will only need the 5V, GND E-stop, pause, resume, counting 5 distinct cores.

Right or wrong?

Probe? z-zero plate? Any other device?

Always a good idea to have some spare signal wires already in the screen.

...laser power, LED lighting...the list goes on.
Actually, I now wish I used that 9 core I had sitting on the shelf!

Our Ölflex "classic" cable is available in 2/3/4/5/7/12 cores. This is my thinking for the gantry cabling where a spindle is used. Doesn't show the obvious motors and spindle power cable:


Note the enlarged button box for the 5 cable entries on the left.

If proximity switches are used, the 12V supply will be on the 7-core cable.