Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Is it a bad idea to use cat7 shielded cable to run the step/dir/com signals to my motor driver to the control card(Acorn)? It looks like my DB44 breakout might take a while to get here. That means me soldering wires to the male connector in tiny little tubes. I don't have any stranded wire that will fit inside the tubes. The cat7 solid copper wire fits perfect. I would have 6 wires to solder. I am not thrilled to have to solder these wires.

I would not use solid wire for ANY machine tool wiring. It fatigue cracks and breaks too easily. Twisted pair, shielded wiring, though is excellent for step and direction signals. Many problems would be avoided if more people did this.

You can use CAT cabling if it is stranded. I use flex and twist rated polyurethane covered CAT7 for my encoder wiring.

OK, thanks.