Cheap and easy way to get wiring for projects

Thought I would upload this as I have been asked at least 50 times in the past on my old forum, present site and previous ones "what wires do I use and where do I get them".

Cheap way for voltage lines is from old household appliances that no longer work, the wires inside the cable are sheathed, flexible and also more than capable.

For thin, flexible cable for cart relocations and other similar work I have suggested using old controller cable from consoles (best ones being PlayStation ones) rather than buying reels of expensive wire which you also only one colour per reel - which makes it also harder to work out if you crossed wires when doing your soldering as they all look the same.



I recently found a far better solution, and free to most people - parallel port cable. This cable has 25 wires inside, all different colours, and flexible. I say "free to most people" as most of us have these cables in the loft from years ago when we used them for running our printers, before USB came along. If you don't have any, they are cheap to buy from ebay - around £5 for 6m or thereabouts.

Anyway, do the cable in around 3-4 inch segments otherwise it is harder to pull the sheathing off the cable. Bend the cable and score with a craft knife so the plastic sheathing breaks itself without damaging the wires.



Pull it out, then repeat for further segments to get the lengths you need.

See - multi coloured, flexible wires, which come away easily from the sheath. The wires are multi-strand which again is ideal.



Thought I would share this tip.

 

My local Salvation Army store often have a few parallel cables in the bins, I may need to check this out.

Recently I've been getting cheap HDMI cables off eBay. They are a dollar or so each of 6 feet long cables. The only issues are that they are tiny wires, something like 28 or 26 awg so it may be a bit hard to work with on a large job, and not suitable for power carrying over a few hundred mA.

Good idea, the parallel cable probably have thicker wires.

 

The wires in parallel cables are thin, around 28awg however as good as any other thin wires. You get 25 wires in a parallel cable and the wires are flexible. Work well though.

 

I just use multi color ribbon wire. Helps keep everything organized since it is a ribbon.

 

Ribbon cable is thinner than the stuff I use, also ribbon cable is easy for the wire inside the cable to snap if you strip them or pull too much when stripping the end on the wire. That's why I don't use IDE cable.

 

This is a great suggestion. Thanks for the tip.

 

Much like with kynar, I find pinching and pulling is sufficient for removing the sleeve on IDE ribbon cable.

Been using it recently actually instead of kynar - does the job well for signals!

 

Good tip on the parallel cables and assuming the parallel cable is of decent quality, the cabling inside should be decent too.

I don't trust $1 eBay wires generally, such as HDMI and phone charging cables. They are of extremely poor quality and I've had a few before, they don't last long, and cause problems.

 

I used the wires from the parallel cable for relocating the GameCube drive unit to the motherboard, works absolutely fine. Going to use for my other projects too as the cable is similar to the reels of thin flexible cable I used to get from Maplins, at about £8 for 25m. using the wires in parallel cables is not only cheaper but also you get each wire a different colour or twin colours rather than one colour from a reel.

Thanks for the "likeys" too guys!

 

I've used USB cables before. Had one that broke on the actual plug end, so i stripped the wire out. You don't get much wire in comparison, but it's still worth keeping.

 

USB cables as you say don't have many wires in them and the wires tend to be less flexible too - which is relevant when relocating ports especially game cartridge ports when you can have a stack of pins to relocate and want to move the port afterwards to where it needs to be without stressing the solder joints.

 

Sounds like you are using 80 wire ide cables, not the 40 wire.

40 wire ide Cable or just ribbon cable is very good for modding.

 

Depends on the mod. 40 wires IDE cable are often made with stranded wires to make it a bit more flexible, frayed end can cause short across solder spot if you're soldering in tight space. For small soldering area like modchip PS2 or other where the soldering spot is less than 0.1" (2.5mm) apart, don't use stranded wire they can be more trouble than they're worth. Solid core are usually found in 80 wires IDE and other very thin wires.

 

You twist stranded cable and tin it, then trim ends. That's never a problem.


But yes, you obviously pick the right cable for the job. No one ever said different.

 

and there is no need to put excessive pressure with the iron and make the wire flare out

 

indeed, simple to tin stranded wire, I do it all the time. If you are soldering to fine joints, twist the stranded wire to compact it, then tin the ends. Leave about 2mm of the wire exposed to solder to, if the sheath has exposed more wire than that just cut it off. Stranded wire is flexible, single core is rigid, another reason to use stranded wire IMO. I swear by it.

Regarding thin single core wire like Kynar, being so thin can introduce interference in the line after a short distance, as low as 1.5 cms. IDE wire (40 strand) is apparently good for wiring up to 15 cms, however normal stranded wire is good for about 18 cms usually. You can go up to many metres however if you use shielded cable, it doesn't have to have a mylar or metal shielding, as long as there is at least 1 spare wire in the cable available, connect both ends to ground and although the cable isn't shielded the interference will be much reduced so you can go to longer distances. That's why any cable you see has connections at both ends connected to ground.

 

You are talking about cross talk rather than typical interference (although its a type of interference all the same) by sound of things. Thats only real way grounding every other wire will help.

I use wrapping wire (AWG30 - same as kynar but less brittle/likely to snap) for all my ps2 mods without issue, well over 1.5cm in length.

 

I always thought they where the same thing, just different names.. Like how Americans call Canada, America 2

 

Kynar is a brand name. It's still a wrapping wire.

I just don't like saying kynar wire when I don't actually like kynar.

It's one of those brand names like kleenex or Google something though.

 

But "Kynar" isn't a type of wire - it's a type of insulation, basically a trade name for one manufacturers version of PVDF. So you can't really make a distinction between "wire wrap wire" and "Kynar wire" - since PVDF was the standard insulation for wire wrap wire anyway.