When it comes to shielding and noise prevention you can't have too much. Noise problems can be very difficult to track down. If would recommend screened cable but if you use unscreened, make sure everything else is really thoroughly screened. Also common mode chokes on the motor cables help a lot. Buy some large ferrite rings and wrap the drive output cables around them (without the screen). For steppers you will need two rings per drive. For each coil output , wrap both wires evenly round the ring, as close to the drive as possible. For DC servos you only need one ring per drive. These chokes smooth out some of the very high speed switching transients which are a major cause of electrical noise.
I would also second the recommendation of starquad cable. It is great for small steppers and signal lines. It is also extremely flexible so it can be used in flexible cable trays. The only disadvantage is that the cores are usually not very well color coded. Les > Douglas Pollard wrote: > >> I bought some cable to run stepper motors off of. I was told it was >> shielded. It is not. If I try to use this am I going to have problems >> caused by stray signals or static? Is it likely to be alright or am I >> looking for trouble?? >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now & Save for Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media. Velocity features a full day of expert-led, hands-on workshops and two days of sessions from industry leaders in dedicated Performance & Operations tracks. Use code vel09scf and Save an extra 15% before 5/3. http://p.sf.net/sfu/velocityconf _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
