Ted Drain
Agent
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2002
- Messages
- 46
Hi all,
Since there seem to be quite a few people interested in this subject, I thought I'd most some results from my cable building experience last week.
I (and a friend) wanted to build custom cables for digital audio, subwoofer, analog audio, composite video, s-video, and component video in my system . In general, I followed the great write-up at Chris White's site:
http://www.bus.ucf.edu/cwhite/theater/DIYCable.htm
I bought the cables by the foot (and the connectors) from Pacific Radio.
http://www.pacrad.com/index.shtml
The cables I used were:
Canare LV-77S coax: analog audio, composite video, digital audio, subwoofer
Belden 1808A: s-video
Belden 7710: component video
Each cable/cable set is terminated with a Canare crimp-on RCA connector (except for the S-Video cable which uses the Part's Express Dayton S-Video connector) and covered with Tech-Flex and shrink tubing.
If I bought the tooling from Canare, it would have been almost $250. I completed these cables and spent about $110 for the tooling. Here's what I bought:
Radio shack coaxial cable cutter 278-244 ($6)
2 Radio shack coaxial cable strippers 278-248 ($13) or from Parts Express 360-016 ($10)
I used 1 stripper for the 7710 and one for the LV-77S - you could get by with 1 stripper if you don't mind losing your settings. The Canare stripping guidelines are to have 9 mm of braid, 6.5 mm of dielectric, and 3.5 mm of center conductor. This stripper is a 2 bladed model that advertises 4, 6, 8, and 12 mm widths (it will also do 10 mm). I set the strippers to 8 mm and set the blade heights to cut the outer jacket and the braid 8 mm from that. I didn’t think that losing 1 mm of braid would cause any problems. If it bothered you, set the stripper to 10 mm and about 1 mm of the braid with a pair of shears. When I stripped each cable, I marked a line 11 mm from the end of the cable and put the right-most blade on that line (3.5+6.5+1). Then all I needed to do was strip 3.5 mm from the end of the cable. I marked a line at this distance and used an adjustable stripper to do this (a utility knife will also work fine if you’re careful).
I admit that this isn't as easy as the single operation the Canare strippers will perform. I didn't have any problems with connectors not fitting correctly so the dimensions worked out fine but it did take longer. Given that I would have had to buy the $115 Canare stripper (TS100) in order to handle both cable types, I didn't really mind. After a few cables, the stripping went very quickly.
For crimping, I purchased a Paladin crimp handle and 2 dies from Lashen electronics for around $80. The Canare center pin can be crimped with the .052” square crimp on the Paladin die #2649. I used the .315” hex crimp for the outer jacket crimp on both cables on the Paladin die #2047. You can save some money by getting 1 die with the handle and then ordering the other die separately. The handle was about $35 and each die was around $22.
If people are interested enough, I’d be willing to create a site similar to Chris’s that details the components and tools I used.
Since there seem to be quite a few people interested in this subject, I thought I'd most some results from my cable building experience last week.
I (and a friend) wanted to build custom cables for digital audio, subwoofer, analog audio, composite video, s-video, and component video in my system . In general, I followed the great write-up at Chris White's site:
http://www.bus.ucf.edu/cwhite/theater/DIYCable.htm
I bought the cables by the foot (and the connectors) from Pacific Radio.
http://www.pacrad.com/index.shtml
The cables I used were:
Canare LV-77S coax: analog audio, composite video, digital audio, subwoofer
Belden 1808A: s-video
Belden 7710: component video
Each cable/cable set is terminated with a Canare crimp-on RCA connector (except for the S-Video cable which uses the Part's Express Dayton S-Video connector) and covered with Tech-Flex and shrink tubing.
If I bought the tooling from Canare, it would have been almost $250. I completed these cables and spent about $110 for the tooling. Here's what I bought:
Radio shack coaxial cable cutter 278-244 ($6)
2 Radio shack coaxial cable strippers 278-248 ($13) or from Parts Express 360-016 ($10)
I used 1 stripper for the 7710 and one for the LV-77S - you could get by with 1 stripper if you don't mind losing your settings. The Canare stripping guidelines are to have 9 mm of braid, 6.5 mm of dielectric, and 3.5 mm of center conductor. This stripper is a 2 bladed model that advertises 4, 6, 8, and 12 mm widths (it will also do 10 mm). I set the strippers to 8 mm and set the blade heights to cut the outer jacket and the braid 8 mm from that. I didn’t think that losing 1 mm of braid would cause any problems. If it bothered you, set the stripper to 10 mm and about 1 mm of the braid with a pair of shears. When I stripped each cable, I marked a line 11 mm from the end of the cable and put the right-most blade on that line (3.5+6.5+1). Then all I needed to do was strip 3.5 mm from the end of the cable. I marked a line at this distance and used an adjustable stripper to do this (a utility knife will also work fine if you’re careful).
I admit that this isn't as easy as the single operation the Canare strippers will perform. I didn't have any problems with connectors not fitting correctly so the dimensions worked out fine but it did take longer. Given that I would have had to buy the $115 Canare stripper (TS100) in order to handle both cable types, I didn't really mind. After a few cables, the stripping went very quickly.
For crimping, I purchased a Paladin crimp handle and 2 dies from Lashen electronics for around $80. The Canare center pin can be crimped with the .052” square crimp on the Paladin die #2649. I used the .315” hex crimp for the outer jacket crimp on both cables on the Paladin die #2047. You can save some money by getting 1 die with the handle and then ordering the other die separately. The handle was about $35 and each die was around $22.
If people are interested enough, I’d be willing to create a site similar to Chris’s that details the components and tools I used.
