CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board
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On the subject of making up cables, I bought a cheap kit off of eBay or Amazon (can't remember which). I was able to make some using single strand solid core cable, but I found that trying to get 4, multi strand wires into the 4 separate inputs of an RJ receptacle was simply impossible for me to do.
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Keep the part of the cable stripped of the sheath short, straighten and arrange the wires so they sort of keep their shape before sliding the plug on.
On the other hand you can get three piece plugs with a sort of a tray to line the wires in + strain relief that may make it easier. (Not sure if they make them for RJ11/RJ14 or just RJ45 though)
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Is something like this an alternative?
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@bearer said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
Keep the part of the cable stripped of the sheath short, straighten and arrange the wires so they sort of keep their shape before sliding the plug on.
On the other hand you can get three piece plugs with a sort of a tray to line the wires in + strain relief that may make it easier. (Not sure if they make them for RJ11/RJ14 or just RJ45 though)
That's what I tried to do and managed it with solid core conductors, but trying to arrange the multi-core flexible stuff to keep it's shape as I slid it into the plug, I found extremely difficult to do. Obviously it must be possible because I bought flexible leads which I cut one end off, but it's not something that I could master - younger eyes and hands might help.
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After fighting through some confusion with straight-through twisted pair, I sacrificed a quite flexible Ethernet cable that came with my wifi access point, did a terrible solder job that's hidden by two to three layers of heatshrink tubing, and the magic smoke stayed in the boards (-:
Now that that's out of the way, I need to make new board mounts for the distribution board and the tool board. Luckily I have added some mount holes for additional things to my carriage, so I do not need to completely redesign it (-:
<>RatRig V-Minion Fly Super5Pro RRF<> V-Core 3.1 IDEX k*****r <> RatRig V-Minion SKR 2 Marlin<>
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@oliof said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
did a terrible solder job that's hidden by two to three layers of heatshrink tubing, and the magic smoke stayed in the boards (-:
If you're unable to secure the heatshrinked part of the cable I'd try to get a hold of some JST ZH terminals and crimp to the twisted pairs instead of soldering; looks like you have a very narrow section for the cable to flex between the heat shrink and the connector?
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@deckingman said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
@bearer said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
Keep the part of the cable stripped of the sheath short, straighten and arrange the wires so they sort of keep their shape before sliding the plug on.
On the other hand you can get three piece plugs with a sort of a tray to line the wires in + strain relief that may make it easier. (Not sure if they make them for RJ11/RJ14 or just RJ45 though)
That's what I tried to do and managed it with solid core conductors, but trying to arrange the multi-core flexible stuff to keep it's shape as I slid it into the plug, I found extremely difficult to do. Obviously it must be possible because I bought flexible leads which I cut one end off, but it's not something that I could master - younger eyes and hands might help.
Yeah the stranded conductors have very little memory compared to solid ones. I've used several methods...
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Arrange the conductors then use a dab of superglue to fix them to a small piece pf paper leaving a few millimeters at the conductor ends to slide into the pin slots.
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Use a tiny bit of Kapton tape across the conductors, again leaving a few millimeters free to slide into the slots.
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Heat the conductors with a heat gun, pull them through your fingers to straighten them, then let them cool and stiffen.
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@gtj0 Good tips - thanks.
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@oliof, I recommend that you zip ties the cables to a secure point on your print head to provide strain relief, and leave the wire ends going into the JST ZH connector loose and flexible so as to avoid pulling on the crimp joints. Here https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com/2020/03/04/converting-the-e3d-tool-changer-to-duet-3-with-hemera-tools-part-2/ is how I did it.
Duet WiFi hardware designer and firmware engineer
Please do not ask me for Duet support via PM or email, use the forum
http://www.escher3d.com, https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com -
@bearer said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
@oliof said in CAN cable for tool distribution board to tool board:
did a terrible solder job that's hidden by two to three layers of heatshrink tubing, and the magic smoke stayed in the boards (-:
If you're unable to secure the heatshrinked part of the cable I'd try to get a hold of some JST ZH terminals and crimp to the twisted pairs instead of soldering; looks like you have a very narrow section for the cable to flex between the heat shrink and the connector?
The only time I tried to use JST ZH connectors without using pre-made tails, I gave up trying to crimp them, but soldering the wires to the crimp pins worked. But I have a smaller crimping tool now.
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@dc42 cable strain relief will be part of the board mount, and I can remove the lower heatshrink tube freeing up the wire ends a bit. Thanks for the recommendation!
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BTW while commissioning the Hemera tool in my tool changer I found a bug in the 3.01-RC3 tool board firmware. See https://forum.duet3d.com/post/136597 for how to get a fixed version.
