continuing my almost vertical learning curve, i believe ive made a right mess of ordering the cables. trying to do things properly, i spoke with IGUS and ordered some chainflex cabling, based on their suggestions.. once you add all the "copper tax", shipping and VAT on, it was NOT cheap. the guy there was a bit frustrated i didnt have a proper "spec" for him to work with, so i cannot say he gave me bad suggestions However: ive now realised the bend radius of the drag chain is much smaller than the minimum radius for the cable i have purchased. cables are already cut and shipped so im stuck with them. looking at the drawings it seems the bend radius of the drag chain is about 60mm... the cable i have ordered for the steppers has a minimum guaranteed bend radius of 81mm. Igus have a nice "lifespan calculator" on their website. with a 90mm bend radius, the cable is guaranteed for 3 million cycles in a 1.5m drag chain at 1m/s at 81mm, that drops to 1 million. a 60mm bend radius breaks the guarantee and estimates failure of the cable after 40,000 cycles. so... never having used a drag chain before, can i just raise the top bracket of the drag chain so it can naturally do a bigger bend? or do i have to buy a drag chain with a bigger bend radius "baked in" ? failing that anyone want to buy 21 metres of fancy 4 core shielded cable?
on a related note the watercooling tubing ive recieved is also strangely stiff.. it naturally bends to a radius of about 100mm.. and can happily be bent to about half that radius , but it takes some force.. beyond that it risks kinking. no idea what it will do to a drag chain, never having actually used one before.
I wouldnt put the VFD cable into the drag chain - no matter how good the quality you still don't want it next to signal wiring. I suggest you build a Swing arm for the VFD cable (and dust extraction - the two nasty EMi sources, together, far away from signal wiring) - also convenient route for water cooling See Swing Arm
im taking about the stepper cabling ive ordered, not the vfd one.. funnily the vfd cable, despite being fatter, has a smaller bend radius (it was more expensive cable) and would be fine in the drag chain... go figure.
Ahh, thanks for clarifying. Then i do think that may just be the wrong kind of cable, you only need 22AWG, so either its overrated or far too armored for the use case to need such a big radius?
this is the stuff: chainflex® cavo di comando CF881 seemed suitable, is approximately 20 awg, which i read is rated for 5 amps. .. hope i can find a solution, i ordered a generous amount to allow routing and placement freedom, meaning i spent about 50 euros on the **** stuff..
If you already have it, i'd say use it. I can't say if this is more or less flexible than the cable chain, but yes, raising the brackets will help. If it has some springiness it should push the cable chain open.
