Well folks, I have had some time in the last few days and I have been working on making my Ribbon Cable. Check it out.
Here is the frame I made to stretch the wires over. The Wires were stretched over a four foot section and clamped at each end. Small Picture Framing nails were used at each end to create the gaps between the wires.
And the wire in correct sequence. The striped wires were bought from madeinsocal6. I had to make the orange and gray wires.
The Orange and Gray wires were made from White 16 ga wire I bought at Lowes. I then cut the wire into sections and placed them in boiling water for 2 minutes, separately. I then added Sunshine Orange Rit Dye or Pearl Gray Rit Dye, both were powdered.
After I placed all of my wires in the the stretcher, I applied two tubes E6000 and spread it over the wires with a putty knife. I found that using a putty knife keeps the gaps between the wire intact.
Now as you can see the Orange bled a little when the E6000 was applied. It looks a bit faded.
The good news was the Gray wire. When i came out of the dye bath it appeared way too dark. The E6000 actually fixed that and caused the color to bleed just enough to look good.
I will post more when I remove the Ribbon Cable from the stretcher in a few days when the E6000 sets completely.
I put a knot in each wire on one end and feed it thought the nails I put in the board on both sides. I then put the clamps on both sides. With a pair of pliers I pulled hard on the loose ends to stretch them, easy.
Just measured my GB2 spectra strip in my new pack and its well under 2 foot. But im not sure about GB1 cable as it requires more length as it needs to be tightly twisted. But id bet money you could get 2 packs worth from that 4 foot strip (as long as you make it hug the EDA box like the screen used packs did).
Same exact way I did with mine except I used packing tape on the board instead of foil. That eliminated any wrinkles from transferring to the glue.
And I also used vinyl glue (instead of E6000) in between each wire that touched each other. And that kept the finished ribbon from being thick or stiff.
And those adhesives are pretty strong stuff. Almost wiped clean the color lines from the striped wires..
So far I’m having to agree this is the best method for this impossible to find part.
Wow, I haven’t looked at this in so long people want more pictures. Well I do have a few that I haven’t posted other then my profile.
Some time ago, just after I made the cable in this thread I cam up with the idea to create a Ribbon Cable Jig that would let me make cables easily. So thinking that, “Shoot, I just get some nylon plastic and use a router to make a channel in the board and some clamps with the spacing for the wires built right in.”, easy right? So I made this.
The trench down the middle is three inches wide and took a ton of passes in the router to make it, as the nylon was very rough to work with. Me and my buddy, Alric, had the make passes in one direction and raise the bit a 1/16 of an inch each time till we were almost at the depth of the 16ga wire.
I thought adding these groves to the clamp would make stringing the wires easy. It did.
So back in December I was able to try out the Cable Jig by making a cable for nick-a-tron. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I had to redo the cable 3 times before it was ready. What was the problem? It turns out the both E6000 and UV6800 will bond to just about and thing. So I called the company that makes those products and ask them what it won’t stick to. Their answer was Polyethylene and Polypropylene.
So I have since contacted a plastics company and got my hands on a sample of Polypropylene and High Density Polyethylene(HDPE). I did some tests at home, sadly I have no photos of the tests. Both work as a good non-stick agent for E6000 and UV6800, however I found that Polypropylene released cleaner.
So there you have it. The plan is when I get home next year to get the Polypropylene made into a new Cable Jig bed and make another cable.
@Proton Charger: The foil was a bit of a pain in the ass to remove. First because it would rip as I was removing it, second because some of the E6000 hadn’t completely cured and was a bit soft in some spots.
@AJ: Yes it is kinda awesome. The only issues I had with this design is the wires in the middle of the bed need additional clamping to keep them taught. Also, if you plan to do something similar, I would recommend carriage bolts and washers for securing them. And the glaring fact that the nylon didn’t perform as expected, so I have the Polypropylene sitting in my basement back in Virginia waiting to be worked on.
No, E6000 is a solvent based sealant. The wax paper will not stop the solvent in the E6000, trust me I have tried. The wax paper bonds right to the E6000.
I just finished sending off an email to a company back home about getting a Mk 2 Cable Jig made out of Aluminum. The Mk2 will not use the E6000 method of creating the cable, but the 4" Vinyl Heat Shrink Tape Method. I hope to hear back from them tomorrow. I will keep you guys posted.
