rf31 benchtop Help Needed

i started this conversion a couple of years ago now and in between restoring my porsche its finally at the stage where i can wire up the control box. i decided to go with the closed loop stepper motors, and have wired those up fine. i have two power supplies to power the 3 axis and the rotary table thing. wiring from the ethernet smooth stepper to the breakout board is fine, it's just from the breakout board to the stepper control units that i have the question about.

what type of wiring do you guy's recommend to use from the breakout board to the stepper control units?

thanks neil

108 views and no-one has any advice what the best wiring is to use?....

ok thanks never mind, i'll find something

The question is pretty broad. Are you looking for wire size recommendations?

Agreed: The question is pretty broad.
Are you asking about pinouts, wire gauges, wire styles ( ribbon or shielded)?
Connectors?

It may also be important whay BOB and Controller you have and the connector styles they have?

A picture would help too.

Maybe that is why 108 people couldn't help.

I would recommend copper or aluminum wiring simply because silver or gold can get quite expensive with no worthwhile benefit for our application.

umm all good answers, it seems there was a question there to answer after all.

being my first cnc conversion I didn't realise there would be much difference in breakout boards, all the ones I have seen have the same screw conection terminals.

cl mototech, yes wire size would help, 22swg 20swg 18swg?

cncuser1, yes is ribbon wire ok, is shielded preferred?

thank you in advance, it may seem a broad question to you guys but I bend steel for a living, wire is wire it just comes in different gauges. if you wanted to talk about how to make a panel from flat steel I would say the same thing, it's a very broad question, what is the panel for, what shape is it, do you have a paper pattern, do you have profile gauges, does it have any swage lines do I have to make that tooling the list goes on.

so to simplify the broad question, ideal wire gauge shielded or not, is ribbon ok?

thanks :)

I use whatever I can get my hands on, usually some left over CAT5 or 6 cabling or if I'm lucky I have some real communications wires (24AWG) with shield, but the shielding doesn't usually do much if not connected to a ground at one end and the lengths are pretty short so doesn't really matter most times.
Its only carrying signals so there is no significant current, you can use pretty small gage wires without issues.
Best bet is to find something that will be neat and tidy when done, that will give the biggest return when you need to look in the cabinet in the future (versus a spaghetti mess of individual conductors going everywhere).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ninefinger

I use whatever I can get my hands on, usually some left over CAT5 or 6 cabling or if I'm lucky I have some real communications wires (24AWG) with shield, but the shielding doesn't usually do much if not connected to a ground at one end and the lengths are pretty short so doesn't really matter most times.
Its only carrying signals so there is no significant current, you can use pretty small gage wires without issues.
Best bet is to find something that will be neat and tidy when done, that will give the biggest return when you need to look in the cabinet in the future (versus a spaghetti mess of individual conductors going everywhere).

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ninefinger, thank you for your simple answer to a broad question :)

shielded not really necessary, ribbon wire should be fine then as its nice and neat, which i like

thank you :)