E-Chain Installation

[mcyr]

Hi all. I'm about finished building a Solsylva cnc (36"x49" table) and am curious if anyone has any words of wisdom about installing some e-chain (Igus or Kabel Schlep). I'm especially curious if there is a minimum width to allow for some distance between the motor cable(s) and the limit switch wires. What would be the minimum distance of separation between them?

Thanks for any insight you may have.

Best regards,
Mike

[andy_ck87028]

Mike,

I'm very interested in the response that you get and I hope this thread will elicit some good content.

To date, the single most important aspect that I have discovered is that your power leads need to be twisted pair. To me, that makes good sense as I recall that emf gets cancelled out with twisted pair.

Beyond that ..............

Andy

[mcyr]

Thanks fpr the response, Andy. I wondered about the effects of twisting the wires, too. We do that often in R/C airplanes with long leads to the servos.

Best regards,
Mike

[CarveOne]

mcyr,

The easy way to twist the wires is to clamp one end of the wires in a vise of some sort, make the wires as parallel as possible, put the other end of the wires in the drill chuck of a variable speed drill and wind the wires up evenly. One turn per two inches after removing the drill is enough. If you wind the wires very tightly there will be more capacitance between the wires that may change the pulse shapes of higher speed signals traveling in the wires.

Wind the limit switch wires also, but reverse the winding direction and the two sets of wires will interact even less.

CarveOne