DIY DC power cables

[tboooe]

Any advice on buying cable shielding? Should I get copper?  Tin copper?  Where is a good source to buy?

[R1200CL]

OK, here we go:

 

Price is starting at $36, and may drop if we are many enough to purchase. Free shipping

 

The cable is not yet listed at his website, but I hope it will be. I think it's depending on you guys start ordering. I hope you don't find it to expensive...

I haven't discussed shield cable with him, as I believe it an overkill for a 20 cm cable.But of cause if that's what everybody like to have, I suppose he can do.
 

Take a look at his other cables at his website. I think he does a pretty nice job.

 

If you all can wait around 24 hours before emailing him, he may get some time to register here on CA and answering questions, as well telling us how he like orders to be submitted.

 

I probably should start a new thread, but I leave it here for now.

And yes it's the new Oyaide plugs and a Canare 4S6.

 

 

[tboooe]

So $36 includes the 2 Oyaide connectors?  If so that's a great price!  Is he willing to make a Y cable?

[sbilotta]

I can vouch for Ghentaudio's workmanship as I have already bought from them.

[R1200CL]

10 minutes ago, tboooe said:

So $36 includes the 2 Oyaide connectors?  If so that's a great price!  Is he willing to make a Y cable?

 

YES as stated i my post. What you see is what you get.

 

I have suggested Y-Connector for him. Let's us see how this one turns out. I hope many will order.

And I have made him aware of JSSG

As I think his other cables will benefit form this technique.

 

The Y-corrector may need the modified Elec plug. But he may come up with an other suggestion, as maybe 8 wires can fit into that Oyaide plug. Just give him some time.

 

Also if you don't like black sleeve, you can have other color or even without I guess.

[tboooe]

I just paid $20 for just 1 Oyaide connector on eBay!  If this vendor is willing to do the JS shielding technique and a Y cable I am in!

 

I may have him make a couple of cables for my REL subs.  

[charlesphoto]

I recently added a Ghentaudio USB cable to my system (from the mR to a Naim DAC V1). Both the sound quality and build were excellent for all of $20, and I was able to easily pull back the heat shrink and snip just the 'live' wire as my DAC doesn't need it. Considering a pair of speaker cables from him for the office. Good stuff and will most likely order one of these DC cables. Definitely interested in a custom Y job as when I tried a cheap Y in my main set up the sound did take a dip.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, tboooe said:

Any advice on buying cable shielding? Should I get copper?  Tin copper?  Where is a good source to buy?

 

You can look at the DIY page on Omega Mikro's site.  The tricky part would be getting rid of insulation to connect the shield material.  You would want to call the principal, Ron Bauman, to ask about that.

[lmitche]

On 4/21/2017 at 3:51 PM, pl_svn said:

 

 

dammit: I have too to redo mine 

Doesn't twist depend on which hemisphere you are in? Relative to the source end of course!  Tip: Just watch water vortex in the toilet to determine direction. ?

[MikeyFresh]

On 4/21/2017 at 4:16 PM, tedwoods said:

High quality diy plugs and wire from the parallel universe of the guitar world:

1. https://www.3monkeysamps.com/collections/all/products/new-product

2. https://www.3monkeysamps.com/collections/all/products/3-monkeys-solderless-cable

They are solderless too...

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

I inquired with 3 Monkeys about the wire they use with these solder-less plugs, it is a 16 gauge coax that is only .110" in diameter.

 

I decided to order their sampler packet that includes two 2.1mm DC connectors, and a 1 foot piece of wire for $13.95 (includes U.S. shipping) itself a good price, but also subject to a very generous full credit applied towards a future larger "kit" order, at which point this sampler becomes free.

 

Even though I have already built a 4S6 cable with the old style Oyaide plugs and have enough plugs and wire for 2 more, I thought I'd take a look at these as another option depending on the application. 

 

If nothing else I'll wire my nephew's Pedaltrain with them.

[octaviars]

On 2017-05-05 at 2:26 AM, JohnSwenson said:

OK here it is: cable shielding, how to make it work and how almost all cables have it wrong.

 

The first important question is, what is electrical shielding and how does it really work?

 

Lets look at the infamous "Faraday cage". For this discussion it is a metal box, with all sides well electrically connected (no gaps). Shielding means that electrical fields outside cannot be sensed inside. Conversely electrical fields inside cannot be sensed outside.

 

So how does this work? When an electric field from the outside world impinges on the box it causes the electrons in the metal to move, this rearrangement of the electrons creates an electric field inside the metal which exactly counteracts the external field, thus the field is essentially stopped at the periphery of the box.

 

The important aspect here is the part "electrons in the metal move". What are moving electrons called? Current. In order for current to flow there has to be a loop. Current will not flow unless there is a loop. In the case of the Faraday cage, the loop is the whole cage. Lets say an electric field impinges on a side of the box, this causes a current flow that goes all the way around the box back to where the field impinges on the box. If the sides are not electrically connected to each other the current cannot flow, thus the electrons cannot move, and the canceling electric field does not get setup, thus no shielding.

 

It turns out that for AC electric fields it is a little different. Some current can flow due to capacitances between conductors. The electrons can move a little bit one way, then a little bit back. If the frequency is high enough the back and forth movement, which is charging and discharging the capacitance is sufficient for shielding. For a given capacitance the lower the frequency the less effective the shielding. The electrons start moving which charges the capacitance, then stop moving when fully charged, they don't do the full movement necessary to produce the canceling field.

 

So what about shielded cables? I hope is now obvious that for shielding to be effective there needs to be a conductive path from one end of the shield to the other. If there is not such a path the only shielding that is going to happen is for high frequencies due to cpacitances involved with the shield.

 

The best way for the shielding to work properly is a separate wire connected to each end of the shield. This is sufficient for shielding from DC to very high frequencies. Note the shield does NOT have to be connected an earth ground, the "ground" of the circuit at either end, or any thing else for that matter. A cable with a shield the is not connected to anything else except itself (ie a separate wire from one end to the other of the shield) will be highly effective in shielding what is inside.

 

Where does this wire need to go? It can be either inside or outside the shield, but if it is inside it can couple to the signal wires inside, so it is usually best to have it outside the shield. Note it has to be insulated from the shield except for the ends where it connects to the shield. It should intersect as little of the external field as possible so it should NOT be tightly spiraled around the cable. Just running along side the shield is best, although a very loose spiral (say one turn per foot) is almost as good.

 

So some ramifications of this: The traditional "connect the shield to one end and let the other end float" is not good, it does not allow a loop so shielding does not happen very well. If you add the external wire connected to the shield at both ends, then you CAN connect one or both sides of the shield to the signal ground or some other ground, but you don't NEED to for effective shielding. You will find that in many cases leaving the shield completely disconnected from the rest of the circuit is the best way to go, you get the benefit of properly working shielding without any interaction of the shield with your system. You may wind wind up with static charges on the shielding so a resistance from the shield to ground may be useful in some cases in order to dissipate static charges.

 

So how come nobody does this? I don't know. My only guess is that cable shielding has been going on long before the actual mechanism for shielding was worked out, thus by the time it was understood, cable shielding was "standard" and nobody ever even thought about analyzing it based on an understanding of how shielding actually works.

 

But shouldn't the big companies know about this? It seems they don't. I have read several app notes from Belden that state that shielding is only effective at high frequencies, at audio frequencies and power supply frequencies (60Hz etc) it is totally ineffective.

 

Audio people are the only ones that seems to at least empirically know about this. Remember phono cartridges and preamps, there is a little green wire that goes from the "ground jack" on the preamp to the tonearm. Everybody assumes that this is to "ground the cartridge" but what it really does is provide a loop from one end of the interconnect shield to the other, it has nothing to do with whether it is "grounded" or not. So if you have (or had) a turntable you were actually taking advantage of this without realizing it.

 

So there you have it, shielding DOES work, but only if you provide a path from one end of the shield to the other. This is effective even if you don't connect the shield to anything else.

 

John S.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cable that goes along outside of the sheild will it matter how thick it is? My thougt is to hide a small wire under the blackmesh nylon braid so it is not visable and connect it to the sheild in the powerplugs. What is your thoughts on this @JohnSwenson

 

 

[Forehaven]

Agreed, what gauge wire do you suggest for this shield wire John?

[R1200CL]

Our friend says he can make a shielded version if requested. (Maybe someone can can confirm a purchase by emailing him and he can make a sample, and notify us her as well).

 

Y-cable seems to be a challenge.

Can someone post ideas what is acceptable. Does it have to be Oyaide ?

Smaller cable, Shield or no shield, or a modified Elec plug, or a plastic plug in one end. I think it's fair if we can agree upon "one standard". Or make the split outside the plug ?

 

Maybe we should find a manufacturer that is willing to make a Y-plug

 

[JohnSwenson]

7 hours ago, octaviars said:

 

This cable that goes along outside of the sheild will it matter how thick it is? My thougt is to hide a small wire under the blackmesh nylon braid so it is not visable and connect it to the sheild in the powerplugs. What is your thoughts on this @JohnSwenson

 

 

So far I have been using 24AWG wire for my tests and it has been working extremely well. As far as I can tell there are two issues: long length wire and very high frequency isolation. The 24 has worked well for the short cables I have built (up to 6ft), For really long ones you may need to go with thicker wire, but I have not done any experimentation on that so I really don't know for sure.

 

For isolating very high frequencies (say gigaHz stuff) the inductance of the wire is probably very important, so this tends to point to thicker wire, but there may be many issues at hand there, I would have to delve much further into that before I could make a recommendation.

 

John S.

[octaviars]

2 minutes ago, JohnSwenson said:

So far I have been using 24AWG wire for my tests and it has been working extremely well. As far as I can tell there are two issues: long length wire and very high frequency isolation. The 24 has worked well for the short cables I have built (up to 6ft), For really long ones you may need to go with thicker wire, but I have not done any experimentation on that so I really don't know for sure.

 

For isolating very high frequencies (say gigaHz stuff) the inductance of the wire is probably very important, so this tends to point to thicker wire, but there may be many issues at hand there, I would have to delve much further into that before I could make a recommendation.

 

John S.

 

My DIY powercables (230vac) are perhaps 3-4ft long so I asume 24AWG will be enough. 

[Forehaven]

48 minutes ago, JohnSwenson said:

So far I have been using 24AWG wire for my tests and it has been working extremely well.

John S.

Is that stranded copper wire John

[Middy]

I only had thin bell wire lying around long enough for my power cables. x3

Cut the shield braid from the earth. Re tinned and attached to both ends.

Ignore the placement.... image purposes. .

 

So far so good.. A little kapton tape holding it in place. 

I think it's better than before.... finer detail. Subjective as always and setup specific. All my cables were mesh shield linked to the earth on the power side only. 

Now the Dr Swensons shield super loops in place...Happy. .

 

[R1200CL]

Here is order info for the cable. 

 

https://www.ghentaudio.com/part/dc01.html

 

 

[sbilotta]

Got one :-)

[tboooe]

5 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Our friend says he can make a shielded version if requested. (Maybe someone can can confirm a purchase by emailing him and he can make a sample, and notify us her as well).

 

Ok I will ask for the John Swenson shielded version and report back.

[Middy]

Ordered just for the effort of arranging this....Fantastic work..

Thank you

 @R1200CL

[pl_svn]

before I order one too (thank you so much @R1200CL  )... does the Canare bend easily?

I need it 20-30cm long and must bend to a "U" between a Regen and LPS-1 without pushing them apart

 

thanks

[Cornan]

1 minute ago, pl_svn said:

before I order one too (thank you so much @R1200CL  )... does the Canare bend easily?

I need it 20-30cm long and must bend to a "U" between a Regen and LPS-1 without pushing them apart

 

thanks

 

The Canare 4S6 is extremely flexible and easy to work with. You will be fine making a U-turn! ?

[Cornan]

Btw. I have ordered XLR cables from Ghentaudio before. They were in great quality.

 

Here is my first Canare 4S6 cable! ?

 

[austinpop]

<Bad joke alert>

Since we're on the topic of "Ghent," and flexible cables, "There once was a young man from Ghent..."

</Bad joke alert>