On Monday 17 October 2016 08:53:59 Ed wrote: > Looking for a very flexible cable for an encoder, 3 pair will work > would like 6 pair. The cable is in a cable track and gets flexed each > time the Z moves. Only need about 15 feet but will take more for > spares. > > Thanks,Ed. > The encoders I have built, doing A/B/Z signal generation from opto-interrupters, and soon to be from hall effect devices, only need 5 connections, ground, which should NOT be grounded to the machine at the encoder, power, normally 5 volts from the bob, and the 3 signals.
The most flexible cable I know about is from Clark Wire & Cable in Chicago. Its a 4 conductor + a thin braided shield woven over a mylar film for a shielding effectiveness of over 110 db, nominally about 6 mm's in diameter. I use it also as motor cable on my toy mill, but noted some heat when used on the x motor of TLM as thats a 475 motor, wired parallel & the 4.5 amps it runs at was heating the cable just enough to detect it. So it got replaced with some heavier and of course stiffer 18 gauge on the last rebuild. It's called "star-quad", and is intended to be used with microphones by using the two wires at opposite corners of the cable lay, in parallel as one conductor in that service, which does an outstanding job of reducing the hum and other external noise pickup. Replacing all the mic wire in the studios at WDTV-5 with it, which was in shielded twisted pair, lowered the noise floor to the point that I could hear the air conditioning if the gain was cranked up and no one else was in the studio. And that was a good 75 db below a normal speaking voice from a lapel mic. Some of my cable on my machines is north of 10 yo, no failures. At 24 gauge, not for high currants obviously, but very good for signalling circuits. Called Mink4 in their catalog, see at <http://www.clarkwire.com/cableMINK4.htm>. That page shows its black, but I've bought it in blue and green too. The green and blue was good at disappearing in the chroma keyed picture. Not a whole lot stiffer than well cooked spaghetti. 2 runs of it could handle differential signalling well too. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
