Modding Where to buy black "ribbon cable"? -FOUND IT! sort of...

Does anyone know a place to buy appropriately gaged black ribbon wire? (conjoined IDE style cable, not sure if "ribbon cable" is the technical term)

If it helps describe my case at all I'm looking for wire similar to that of the Corsair HX series PSUs (as seen in the pic below)


Thanks for any help in advance.

-Jesse

 

i think home depot sells stuff like that try them or lowes they should have it

 

Thanks anyway UltimateGamer but Home Depot was a negative, anyone else have any ideas; I'm more than willing to import from anywhere.

Even the proper naming convention would lend a hand in making my googling more efficient.

Also the more 'strands in the ribbon' the better, ie I'd love to find something comparable to an 18gage IDE cable...~50 strands or so. I'll happily settle for 4strands+ but ~50 would be preferred.

 

Asus boards come with black (apart from the Asus name) IDE & floppy cables, and you can buy them from their store (search floppy). But if you want a cable to carry power as in the photo you need something much thicker than standard ribbon cable.

This is probably what you're after, but could be hard to get just a yard or two.

 

@Cpemma

Many thanks sir. We're getting warmer.

The IDE cables aren't really going to be a heavy enough gage to replace PSU wiring (amung other things), even running USB power over IDE can be touchy, so that's out.
The spectra-strip solution may be as good as I'll find, but I'll be needing a lot more than just a meter or two so I can't imagine a dilemma there.

 

Power wise you should be fine with IDE style ribon cable for USB, after all you can always use a couple of conductors in parallel to supply more current, I think you might come unstuck for the data lines though because in USB cables the data is sent over a twisted differential pair to reduce interference and you cant replicate that in a ribbon cable.

Moriquendi

 

I used ASUS branded IDE black cable (~26-28gage) in the first revision of my eeePC mod and ended up almost frying the board when some of the cables overheated and the rubber shielding melted away. These wires were used to transfer USB voltage and data lines.

I was only using IDE as a product comparison. Allow me to reiterate:

I'm searching for a HEAVY GAGE IDE "STYLE" Ribbon cable. Capeable of handling the voltages seen int the average PSU.
The wires shown in the image linked above are exactly what I seek...only with 'more strands' the image above shows what appears to be 20(?)gage 6stranded ribbons. I'm hunting for something with as many strands as possible, ideally 50 or so; not just 6.

Hope this helps. Thanks again.

 

http://www.hcm.hitachi.com/electronic_ribbon_cable/156_stranded_wide_pitch_ribbon_cable.shtml

There you can get up to 18ga 24 conductor ribbon cable. Not sure if they have it in black or not, but if not a little vinyl dye would take care of that.

 

Hell, you can dye it with regular Rit clothing dye, as long as you don't dip the open ends in the dye. Just trim off the gray ends.

 

A normal 4-pin Molex will be at least 18AWG, same as SATA power and the +12V Aux connector. Floppy power connectors are 20AWG.

 

Thanks for the help everyone.

I've been doing much hunting and have come up with a few suppliers of "Standard Flat Ribbon Cable" more specifically what it I've been searching for is called "BONDED Flat Ribbon Cable". The difference between the two is the stranded/webbed varieties are extruded as one piece, whereas the bonded varieties are made of separate wires sonicly welded together (that the kind of wire seen in the image in my first post).

At these gages, 18-20gage, the options are scarce but here what I've discovered:

At 18gage what seems to be the only option is wire with a large 0.156in "pitch" (pitch is a measurement of the space between wires). This translates to a cable roughly 3.5" wide with 24 "conductors" (conductors refers to the number of individual wires in the ribbon).

The only suppliers that I was able to come across for wire of this gage with 7-24conductors are ITW Pancon and AG Devices. Apparently 3M also makes a stranded ribbon wire but I've been unable to get though to someone knowledgeable enough to offer any real assistance.

I've also been directed to Spectra-Strip, apparently they have a selection of Bonded ribbon wire but I've yet to hear back from their support team. Bonded wire is preferred because it will have the smallest possible pitch, and with the complexity of my mod plans every MM of conserved space will be a big help

I've purchased/ordered small samples of ribbon wire from 1/2 a dozen sources, waiting on delivery now. If anyone else is interested in these products let me know and I'll do my best to fill you in with what I've discovered.

If there are any owners of CorsairHX series power supplies reading this thread could you be so kind as to post the manufacturers branding on the wire itself, if there is any. This may be able to further point me in the right direction in finding a supplier.

Thanks again - Jesse

 

Sorry for the thread hijack.
I'm searching for the same thing, does anybody knows a store in europe that sells it... i couldn't fin anything in my country (Portugal).
Thanks

 

@ettienne Welcome to the forums. Bonded or extruded - both are very specialty items at this size wire gage. And since most of the major spectialy wire manufacturers are located here in North America (by my findings)... you may have a very difficult time.

I was able to get a sample from ITW Pancon of a 24conductor 0.156" 18gage ribbon - seen in the below image - but as you can see the 0.156" pitch makes the cable very wide, ~3.5".


I have discovered that Corsair's PSU are designed and fabricated by Channel Well Technology and ViewSonic (who could have ever guessed that?), and they had the wires for the HX series Corsair PSU's custom engineered and fabricated. I spoke with a man by the name of Shawn Chen of Channel Well - who claimed to have designed the HX series PSU, and they weren't willing to sell/offer up any quantity of the wire.

Spectra-Strip also generously provided me a sample, albeit only about 10feet, of the wire shown in the image below. This is pretty much exactly what I was seeking it's an 18gage 7conductor bonded ribbon (note that the 7th conductor was yellow, so I peeled it off). Further communication between Donna Limauro of Spectra-Strip and myself has proven that this sample is a remnant of a custom fabricated wire used in an old contract. Donna went on to state "Unfortunately - this is the only piece I have and I have no idea what the minimum would be to order it."





I'm currently trying to negotiate for a limited run of about 100' of the spectra-strip wire and should all go well I'd be happy to provide you with whatever I have left over. As for pricing, it's looking rather steep right now - but all in the name of aesthetics.

 

hey I had missed this thread! The link is to a 4-wire 18ga 100ft roll. I have seen 5 & 6 wire versions as well. It's utility trailer wire.

check out some wire

 

Thanks for the link lost_modder; I actually have a spool of that very wire sitting here beside me.

I've been unable to find the 6conductor variety - if you happen across it, care to offer up a link?

Even still that would be settling, as I'd really like to find something with 24conductors (at minimum 8) - hence the reason I'm looking into having it specially manufactured.

 

i may have found something for you http://catalog.tycoelectronics.com/catalog/bin/TE.Connect?C=18718&M=FEAT&P=14164,115287&U=&BML=&LG=1

i simply googled "ribbon cable" it was the second site that showed up.

 

I appreciate the link, however...
The challenge is not in finding ribbon cable, it's in finding 18 gage ribbon with no pitch between the conductors(strands) and a minimum of 8 conductors.

And as mentioned in an earlier post, I've learned that at this gage cable with no pitch (pitch, is the space between the individual conductors) is referred to as "Bonded Cable"

 

thanks for the quick reply! I've done some digging and apparently there's a psu manufacturer that might be able to help if someone that speaks/writes a better english than me, ultra, has some cable that looks like what we want, 0 pitch and psu friendly since it's used in one... is there another volunteer that can give a try??
I will try again when i get home, since i'm at work right now...


Sorry for my bad english, but this is the 3rd day straight i did not sleep, trying to think i my native language is difficult, let alone triyng to right this...

 

You're english is very good, don't worry about that.

I'll try to make contact with that company today and let you know how it goes. As it stands now I'm having, a minimum purchase amount of, 1250ft being manufactured specially for Prometheus(my mod). The sad part is that it'll take 4-6weeks before they can begin production, so it's about 8weeks off at the soonest.