18 gauge would probably be fine for those motors. I would not go any bigger than 16 guage.
Personally, I don't believe that you need to use shielded wire from your drives to your steppers.
The VFD wire to the spindle MUST be shielded.
I am working on my first table had planned to use shielded cables for pretty much everything I could. That was until I tried to locate 12/4 stranded shielded wire. It feels like it doesn't exist. The fact this isn't commonly available leads me to believe I'm doing something silly, and it's not what I should be using.
The steppers are Nema 34 3.5A 60V and the longest run will be somewhere around 30 feet. I was leaning towards 12AWG stranded (seems to be readily available and often sold as 12/4 speaker cable) figuring voltage drop would be minimal but then I got caught up in the search of shielding.
Is it common to skip the shielding on your stepper and VFD wiring and only use shielded for your low voltage sensors? I suppose I'm most worried about the interference introduced by the VFD. It's a 3kw 3ph spindle. I've seen a few builds where builders mount the inverter to the back of their Z-axis, perhaps it's to avoid this dilemma entirely.
Please share your thoughts! Thanks in advance, happy to be part of CNCZone!
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18 gauge would probably be fine for those motors. I would not go any bigger than 16 guage.
Personally, I don't believe that you need to use shielded wire from your drives to your steppers.
The VFD wire to the spindle MUST be shielded.
Gerry
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Thanks for your input Gerry! Now the hunt for the correct gauge wire for my VFD begins.