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How do you make reliable, low-cost cables quickly?

dougw

I do lots of electronics design and building and inevitably need to make lots of cables. Since making cables is not my favorite activity, I try to use methods that are quick while still providing reliable connections. And of course I always need to keep the costs down.

This short post shows a couple of the main ways I accomplish these objectives.

image

Yodamonk, the cable guru.

Custom Cable Methods

Discussion

I haven't posted much content lately so I thought I would post something about making cables. This activity is not usually exciting enough to be a great blogging topic, but I also wanted to play around a bit with some AI media generation. (No AI text though) The tough Yodamonk dude came out amazing.

I am always looking for efficient ways to make useful cables, so if you have any interesting tips, please jot them down below...

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  •   Oh, my favorite hatted thing to do in the shop! Before we can build a custom cable you have to take a long look at "TOOLING" Well if you are working with mill connectors, which I do, they come in two flavors, solder and crimp and then poke home. For solder connectors, you need your wire to be striped to the proper length and then dipped into the solder pot then soldered into the appropriate "cup", now you should use shrink over the wire cup and the wire, hopefully, you did it right and there < 1/8" between the top of the cup and the insulation!!! If you did it right, get a beer!, Now for the monster in the crimp and poke! well just like before you have to strip the wire. Then get the right tools and accessories to make the perfect crimp. crimp it can then poke it home, please note you don't need the shrink tubing here. 

    Now the question is this a one-off if not, I normally try and build a jig to plug into my cable tester.. But then I need to develop a Map.  lets say the cable that we are talking about has a large round connector at one end and 3 or 4 smaller connectors at the other end. PRAY that there are no errors. My little tester has 100 outputs and 100 inputs! 

    ALL off the paper work for each connector is stored on the computer. 

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  •   Oh, my favorite hatted thing to do in the shop! Before we can build a custom cable you have to take a long look at "TOOLING" Well if you are working with mill connectors, which I do, they come in two flavors, solder and crimp and then poke home. For solder connectors, you need your wire to be striped to the proper length and then dipped into the solder pot then soldered into the appropriate "cup", now you should use shrink over the wire cup and the wire, hopefully, you did it right and there < 1/8" between the top of the cup and the insulation!!! If you did it right, get a beer!, Now for the monster in the crimp and poke! well just like before you have to strip the wire. Then get the right tools and accessories to make the perfect crimp. crimp it can then poke it home, please note you don't need the shrink tubing here. 

    Now the question is this a one-off if not, I normally try and build a jig to plug into my cable tester.. But then I need to develop a Map.  lets say the cable that we are talking about has a large round connector at one end and 3 or 4 smaller connectors at the other end. PRAY that there are no errors. My little tester has 100 outputs and 100 inputs! 

    ALL off the paper work for each connector is stored on the computer. 

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