cable

[lgalla]

Anyone know where to get flex shielded cable for less than the cost of THK's for steppers or servos?I found a supplier,1000ft@ $19,100.02 us.Igus is cheaper,$17.00/ft.I thought a good source would be companys that sell steppers& servos.Not so,I guess they know they wont sell any steppers if the cable costs more than the motor.
Larry

[ger21]

What gauge and how many conductors?

[JerryFlyGuy]

Larry, as gerry said, #cond x gauge makes a HUGE difference! Huge, I've just finished buying several hundred feet of this stuff and let me tell ya.. its not cheap.. not in the least..

Here's a thread I started about the subject http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28394

I got a quote from Igus [ through a local supplier (Motion Ind.)] for alot less than $17/ft actually the most expensive was a VFD cable @ $11/ft. It was 12ga/4cond. The rest were a fair bit cheaper. If your going to run them in cable chains the cont. flex rating is a must.. Braided shielding seem's pretty common under this spec.

HTH

Jerry

[ger21]

18 gauge 5 conductor is only about $2.70/ft.

[wildcat]

Have you checked eBay? Seriously. I needed some multi-conductor sable recently and could not justify/afford the 250ft. min. that everyplace where I could find it had. There was a guy on eBay selling the shielded cable I needed by the ft. He had probably had to buy the big roll and was now dividing up the excess. Sounds like you need quite a bit different cable than what I bought given the price difference. Worth a shot though

[JerryFlyGuy]

Ebay has SOME stuff.. but you have to be REALLY careful that you get flex cable! There a people selling cable or 'STEPPER WIRE' on ebay, which is NOT rated for cont. flexing.. This is important as the cont. movement will start to break wires and shielding and you'll just end up re-wiring your machine [if your lucky] and replacing drives which got fried [if your less lucky] or worse! [if your just plain.. well.. you get the idea..]

Also check the rating's against your power transmitted, larger cond. size costs more, but the will preform better over longer cable runs, over the lighter stuff.


Jerry

[phantomcow2]

I just placed an order with Emtel electronics for a 25ft roll of 6 conductor cable. It is fully shielded, has the aluminum wrap and the braided long cable for connection. Actually it was ebay, but hte vendor was Emtel. This appears to be pretty good stuff:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...1697&rd=1&rd=1

[JerryFlyGuy]

Phantom, a couple things [and DON'T ask me how I know this]. For starters 22awg is to small for my machine as it will be for Larry's it should have more than 1amp, they say you can use it for chassis wiring and put 7 amp's in it, but not for power trasmittion [driving motors].

Also I'd question whether that wire is flex rated.

If you want to know what wire you should be running check here http://www.interfacebus.com/Referenc...AWG_Sizes.html
or here http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

I may be a stickler for details but I do think that almost all cnc equipment should have the correct wire or your just asking for problems.

[Rant]
I just got rooked off ebay. I bought some 18 conductor 16ga FLEX wire w/ shield and 'drain' wire, when it gets here I find that it is 18x16 wire but NOT shielded and therefore NO drain wire.. I was pissed to say the least.. I'm ready to run wire and now I don't have any.. and I bought 200ft of this crap..
We'll see were this goes as I just got the wire last night and the seller hasn't replied yet..

Oh, and this is the SECOND time this exact thing has happened to me, the first time my money was refunded. [different suppliers]

Sometimes EBAY isn't what its all cracked up to be. I think I'm going to just pay the premium and get it locally for $7/ft or some dumb thing..

[/rant]

Fwiw

Jerry