EMRFD Message Archive 6538

Message Date From Subject
6538 2011-08-08 09:35:14 Chris Howard question about some cable
I have some cable which has 16 strands of something like 22 awg.
Each strand has teflon insulation and each strand has a tightly
woven braid over the insulation.

It looks like pretty fancy stuff.

I want to know if I can use strands of this where I might normally
put a piece of small coax cable to carry a small RF signal.

Otherwise, what would it be good for?


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6539 2011-08-08 13:12:13 Gary, WB9JPS Re: question about some cable
You probably have cable that's intended for mass-terminated coaxial cable assemblies. They are commercially available for interconnecting boards over short distances, normally for digital signals. We use them for adding high-speed peripheral boards to an FPGA system, where digital protocols (up to 3 Gbps) run over each micro coaxial line. Loss is worse than larger cables, but if you're only going a few inches, it's fine. The stuff I'm familiar with is from Samtec (High-Speed Cable Assemblies). Some of them are incredibly small, like 34 AWG center conductors. Amazing. For amateur purposes, I would think you are limited only by your physical ability to work with those tiny cables.

-Gary, WB9JPS