Will try some different sources for cable. If you pay $1.65 for a meter, I should be able to find something that cost less $10 for a meter which is the best price I've found so far.

My wife and I are planning to visit your country in June next year - should we bring some cable? http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/happy.gif

Have you tried this company?:

http://www.miltronic.no/

Checked with them, turns out that the ÖLFLEX CLASSIC 115Y is an inexpensive cable compared to the ÖLFLEX CLASSIC 110Y that they stock. There is also ÖLFLEX 120CH which is a fraction less expensive. They wanted $$$ to cut from a roll, however directed me to local resellers. These however only sell to registered businesses.

I contacted Mariss who said you don't need a that thick cable, especially when not using the max output of the drives. We'll see what I can come up with.

Will cables with both braided and foil shield work?

I'm sure that that a double-shielded cable will work. The "inexpensive" 115Y sounds just right! :)

From the Mouser catalog, these are the prices for flexible control wire and the wire from Bob Campbell. Is the cost/quality difference worth the price differincail?

Alpha Wire XTRA-GUARD High Flex Cable 18AWG 4C SHIELDED 100ft $1560.36
Alpha Wire XTRA-GUARD Standard Flex Cable 18AWG 4C SHIELDED 100' SPOOL GRAY $1029.18

Bob Campbell
Alpha wire Multi-Conductor Communication and Control Cable 4C 18AWG 100' SPOOL $123.79

No, there will not be a ten-fold (plus) improvement in quality, reliability, performance, etc. We are not building a machine where we have to have 100.00% up time. If we were, then a lot of other components would have to have 10-fold cost increases.

Can someone tell me if the Porter Cable & Milwaukee routers have ground wires in their cords? ie. are the cords 3-core or 2-core?

Gerald,

Both of those brands are 2-wire cords. I own both of them and physically checked. I was surprised by both. I expected them to be 3-wire. Why?

Marc

Thanks for checking Marc.

In the "cables" thread ^{(this post and responses, were moved here)} I am still saying 3-core cable for the routers....that is obviously wrong. 2-core screened/shielded cables will be easier to find than 3-core.

I was thinking that all metal casing tools still had a ground wire, but you have just confirmed this to be not true.

What does screened and shielded actually mean? I am sure that if I had to ever replace a plug, which I have done to many American-made tools, I would find absolutely no screening or shielding (if that means metal). I would find standard rubber insulation for each conductor inside a rubber sheath housing all conductors. Maybe noise is minimized by twisting the conductors inside the sheath the way the conductors are twisted inside a CAT-5 ethernet cable. Don't know. Never completely stripped a tool power cord. I would believe that neither manufacturer is terribly concerned about noise. Is that your concern?

Crudely put; when long lengths of cable are bundled together, they start to talk to each other.

Screening/shielding stops this. It stops cables from emitting or receiving stray signals (interference). The router is not sensitive to incoming noise - because of its brushes it tends to emit noise. The wires from the pushbuttons are the most susceptible receivers. The stepper motor cables emit high frequencies.

Interference can be prevented by keeping parallel cable runs short, keeping cables well separated, or failing those, shielding/screening them.

Is there and after market screen / shield that you can "lace" over power cords or would you simply replace the entire cord with one that is screened / shielded / grounded?

I doubt if practical "lacing" were available. Remember we also need flexibility, both of the screening and the inner copper cores.

If we wanted to save money in this area, we could consider having screens only on the susceptible signal (push-button) cable. Or only having expensive cables for the short sections that actually flex. Or moving the control box under the table. Each of these options carry risks.

Yes, copper braid sleeves are available to do this. But with anything copper these days it is not a cheap solution. It runs about $1.50USD/ft. I would invest that $1.50 into getting a better cable.

As for me, I am going to give it a go with:
Alpha wire Multi-Conductor Communication and Control Cable 4C 18AWG 100' SPOOL $123.79 Mouser Page

David,

I'm waiting on a quote from Hi-Tech Controls. I'm just not comfortable with the foil shield. A year from now (or more), I don't want to be trouble shooting intermittent wire problems.

Did you go with Hi-Tech? If you did, what did you buy for $600. That seems low for what I'm wanting to get.

Greg

Gerald,

Whats the proper technique for braided cable?

Greg

For braid, you don't need to fold it back for strain relief, or join on stronger wire. The braid is quite strong enough to be treated as any of the other cores. You crimp a terminal directly to the braid.

I put a thin heatshrink sleeve over the short bit of exposed braid, before it enters the terminal. And then a bigger heatshrink sleeve over the outer cable where the cores break out - this covers any stray braid "hairs" that may be peeping out there.

Thanks Gerald,

Greg

Hello Gerald and friends. I was wondering what is the best trick to cut the surface off a cable for making different connections, with out cutting the cables underside. ¿Do I have to be a surgeon?:confused:
Hope to be finishing soon my working area (Its been raining almost every day and had not time to finish roofing) so I can post new progress.:mad:

Welcome back Hugo!

I bend the cable over a finger in the one hand, and then use a very sharp knife to push down onto the tight skin of the cable with the other hand. First you need to drag the blade slightly so that the skin starts splitting under the pressure of the blade. Stop slicing/dragging while the skin splits, and the blade will stop at the next layer. Then roll the cable a bit over the finger to slice in from another angle - about 4 places around the cable and then the outer case breaks off at the knife marks.

I found a multicores cable, is it good for us ?

NEXANS LYFLEX B

and the link :

http://www.nexans.fr/eservice/naviga...nId=126876#top

That cable looks very good.

Ok, I've got my wire, but some are Unshielded, is all wire necessary shielded ?

I think Motor, Spindle, can be shielded and other's ?

Michel

You might be lucky, you might not. I didn't take any chances, so I recommended all screened cables. Before, I did have some bad experiences with unscreened cables, and I personally won't take the chance to order some unscreened cables. But, if I have already purchased the cables, then I would try it.

Gerald, I have 2 phase Oriental motors w/ ( 6 wires).
I have come across some 7 conductor shielded 18 Ga stranded wire. Is this good or over kill?

Thanks
joe

Hi Joe

The drive (eg Gecko) will only accept 4 wires. You don't run all the motor wires all the way to the drive. With your motors you will only connect to 4 of those 6 wires.

Gerald, What about the gauge?

Next question,

Would it be smart or dumb to run cable with extra wires. If a wire breaks, you have spares ready... or would you assume that since they are all flexing together, If one goes they are all about to go?

My suggestion for the motors has always been 18 gage, mainly because it is a substantial, strong wire. You could go thinner. Quoting Mariss Freimanis on 29 Aug. '07:

"Most will agree 22-gage wire is pretty small (0.64mm or 0.025"
diameter). Let's see how it would work out wiring to a 7A per phase
motor 10' (3m) away.

22-gage wire has 0.16 Ohms resistance for a 10' length. Two wires are
needed per coil so that's 0.32 Ohms. The voltage drop will be 2.2V due
to wire resistance at 7A. If your power supply voltage was 65VDC then
it just became a 63VDC supply as far as the motor is concerned. Will
your motor know the difference? Not at all; it draws 7A at low speed
where supply voltage doesn't matter.

At high speed your motor phase current drops to 3A. The cable drop
becomes 1V, the supply becomes 64VDC instead of 65VDC. Does the motor
care? Not at all again.

Will the cable melt? Cable dissipation is 7^2 times 0.32 or 15 Watts.
That works out to about 1/8W per inch. It will be warm but not hot. At
high speed it's 3W and 0.024W / inch. Not even warm."

Yes, if one wire is becomes faulty, dump the whole thing

For the past few days, I've been trying to locate a source for decent quality flexible cable. Good grief. I can't believe how hard it is to get someone to call me back with a price. Since I don't want to buy 500 feet of cable, they won't deal with me or they leave me hanging. I spoke with a salesman at the Lapp factory and he said they will sell short lengths of cable to distributors. Then when I contacted the local Carlton-Bates office, one salesman said he'd call back with a price. He never did. The next salesman said they only sell spools of wire. Yeah right.

I know that there are some small company owners that read this forum who deal in motors and circuit boards for CNC machines. Some have invested lots of time and money in R&D on their products. Maybe one of y'all would be interested in taking advantage of a business opportunity. I'm not suggesting that there is enough demand just from Mechmate builders to justify buying large spools of the cable we need but surely there are other CNC machine builders/owners seeking a source for small amounts of decent cable. There has to be some commonality in the types of cable we all desire. Heck, Lapp and Alpha don't sell that many different variations in continuous flex cables. I'd be willing to purchase cables with an extra conductor or maybe a larger guage if I had to. A seller could probably get by with a limited inventory in the beginning in order to get established as a dealer willing to sell short lengths and then expand the product line as demand increases.

However, if you want to get my order, you better hurry because I'm not the kind of guy that sits around on his butt waiting for things to happen. I'll eventually find a source and I'll post the contact info here for everyone else.

My next call will be to the regional sales manager for Carlton-Bates to let him know he has a lazy sales staff. If he doesn't care, maybe the vice president for sales at the Carlton-Bates Corporate headquarters will.

Doug,

I really like the way you think! Keep it up.

Marc

Here is a link for you:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Stepper-Servo-Mo...QQcmdZViewItem

Gerald,

I think I've found a reasonable deal on cable for us North American builders and I'd like to get your opinion on its quality. It has a braided shield and a 10X bend radius.

The salesman at Tannehill is named Dennis and was very helpful. I gave him the part numbers for the Olflex 115CY cable you said was good. He said they didn't have it but that Helukabel makes exact duplicates of the same stuff (type F-CY-JZ , flexible, Cu-screened, grey) and he'd get those prices for me. He called back later with the info below.

Here is the link to the cable on Helukabel's website.

http://www.helukabel.de/index.php?la...masterid=16320

These are his prices:

1.0mm squared (18 AWG) 4 core - $1.44/foot
2.0mm sqd (14 AWG) 3 core - $2.42/foot
0.5mm sqd (21 AWG) 7 core - $1.55/foot
0.5mm sqd (21 AWG) 2 core - $.93/foot

For each type of cable, there is a $25 cutoff charge.

He said the prices he quoted me could be obtained by anyone who wanted it. If Gerald says this is good stuff and anyone else is interested, Dennis's contact info is:

Dennis Holtgrave
Lapp Tannehill, Inc.
8675 Eagle Creek Parkway
Savage, MN 55378
952-881-6700 ext 3614
952-881-0743 fax

[email protected]

PS. I left a civil voicemail for the sales manager at my local Carlton-Bates but he never called back.

Oh yeah. Thanks Mark. And GaryC, I'm looking for braided shield so I don't have weird problems popping up later when the foil wears out. Thanks for the referral anyway.

Those Helukabels look just right technically, but it is still expensive compared to other parts of the world. Your government may have a high import tax on foreign cable from Germany . . . .

Thanks Gerald. Yeah, I noticed they were expensive but the price seemed to be a bit lower than what other guys had been posting over the past few months. Oh well, we all have our challenges getting parts depending on where we live in the world. I guess the ideal fulltime job to have, if you are building a Mechmate, is an international airline pilot.:)

If anyone is planning to order cables soon, please wait. Within the next couple of weeks, I hope to finish routing the cables on my table and I'll try to give y'all a more accurate estimate of the lengths required. This stuff is pretty expensive so you don't want to waste any if you can help it.

Tonight, I almost ripped out the Y axis e-chain so I could reverse it. I thought I might be able to save 6-7 feet of the 2 core cable used in the e-stop circuit. Then I realized that if I reversed the e-chain, I would use more 4 core cable used to run the motors. Anyway, I think everyone will need to order more than 35 feet of the 2 core e-stop cable. Mine ended up short and if I don't splice on some extra, I'll have to mount the control box on my table like Hugo.

Good note Doug.
FYI
A great source for "cut as much as you need" is from Skycraft Surplus in Orlando, Florida. They have a website and do mail order. They stock many 4/6/7/9 core chainflex/olflex and others for cable chain use. It all starts in the .43/ft range and goes up.