Very short cables to Flashcut Servo motors

[DonFrambach]

I just received a servo retrofit kit from Flashcut for my Sherline mill. I was very surprised to find that the leads from the motors are only about 6 inches long. Flashcut supplied extension cables to connect the motors to their servo box. It seems to me that these connectors are located in exactly the wrong place where they are likely to be damaged by cutting debris and fluids.

When I called Flashcut, I was told that these are cheap Chinese motors (I paid $250 for each one so they seemed expensive to me). I was told that they have customers who want cables of different lengths so they have decided to supply very short cables to the motors and then deal with customer requests for different cable lengths by selling extension cables of different lengths. I was told that it is very difficult to splice in an extension to their cables and they strongly advised me not to attempt that. I was told that I could purchase sealed motors with appropriate cables for $895 per motor.

I admit that I am a newbie but this doesn't seem right to me. I paid a lot of money to get what I thought was a top notch servo system and I'm very surprised to be dealing with a kludgy cable solution!

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions

I hope it's ok that I have an identical post in the benchtop mills forum

[Torchhead]

Gotta love that proprietary stuff. Personally I think 250.oo per motor for small servos is high not to mention almost 900 bucks each!!

If they are molex type (white Nylon connectors) find some heatshink tubing that will fit over the connectors then plug them up and shrink it down. If you need to disconnect them just cut the tubing off.

Next time shop around. There may be other solutions out there that don't require a bank loan.

TOM CAUDLE
www.CandCNC.com

[Al_The_Man]

Originally Posted by DonFrambach It seems to me that these connectors are located in exactly the wrong place where they are likely to be damaged by cutting debris and fluids. I was told that it is very difficult to splice in an extension to their cables and they strongly advised me not to attempt that.

If they are connectors that normally are used in an enclosure and you want to eliminate them and extend the cable, what I have done is prepare a length of cable as close as possible to the original if multicore.
Cut the connectors off and use heatshrink tube over each conductor after you have solder spliced a 3/8~1/2" twist splice, once you have all wires spliced and individually heatshrink covered, use a Heavy duty thick wall heat shrink over the total splices, but before heatshrinking this outer cover, partially fill with RTV sealant, heatshrink and let the RTV setup.
This makes for a nice sealed connection that is not too bulky.
Al.