Shielded CAT-5 that is more flexible

Are you using solid CAT5 wire or stranded? The stranded is obviously more flexible. Google shows lots of sources for CAT5e stranded STP (shielded twisted pair).

Also, you might want to try flat CAT5 cable, which is also available in shielded. I've never even seen the stuff, so I have no idea if it's any more flexible, but it might be more convenient if it can fold behind the drawer mechanism. Note that the flat CAT5 cable usually comes pre-terminated with RJ-45 plugs.

Thanks, Jeff. I didn't remember "STP". Dang, I think I am getting old here ...

And single braided over shield is more flexible than any foil shield version, maybe even 45 % coverage would pass and it is more flexible than 95 % varieties.

Hi Jörg,

be careful, CAT5 cable doesn't like radius under two inches AFAIR. If a cable is too flexible it may tend to untwist itself and then you may get garbage...

Regards

Marte

Well, so far I have only seen Foil shield. Do you remember a brand with braided shield?

I did find dual-pair microphone cable which would work since LAN only needs two pairs. But it won't be so easy to get a standard RJ jack connected in production.

We won't go much under 2". Slight loss of twisting would be ok here since data rates are really low.

Mainly Ethernet terminations aren't shielded, so there's no 'ground' connection in the RJ-45 plug. If you go to the shrounded connectors, the compatible shielded cable is stiff jacket/foil-shield over (?solid) wires.

Could you ground a braided tube at the chassis and on the drawer, and just route a stranded CAT5 cable through that?

I have this joy/frustration with people that beat me at thinking outside of the box.

That's what they have in the system now. It's a pain in the neck in production (very complex mechanics) and then there is the concern of chafing.

Adhesively bond the mesh to the jacket. Select the adhesive carefully.

Production folks don't like that kind of stuff :-)

Anyhow, as posted in my response to Graham we've found a domestic source that might work:

A lot of engineering is based on finding a solution NOW. Rather than analyzing everything to death (the academic approach). Let us know what the results are.

Try these.

Both have continuous flex CAT5 cabling.

Jeff

I will. But it's a client so I won't know when they will get around to this part of the project.

Thanks for the hints, Jeff. I'll check them out.