Ribbon cable with 3 attached insulation displacement connectors

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Ribbon Cable Manufacturers


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A listing of Ribbon Cable Manufacturers with Related sites.
The products the companies produced are listed under the company name which are indexed in alphabetic order.

Ribbon Cable Manufacturers




Flat cable may use parallel wire or twisted pair wire and be shielded or unshielded cable, which may also include a jacket.
Normally the twisted pair style cable is made parallel about every foot so an IDC connector can be used.
The standard Wire Gauge used with ribbon cable is 28AWG. However; 22, 24, 26 and 32 AWG wires exist.
The wires are fixed in place by the insulation and have a pin-to-pin spacing of 0.5 inches, but other spacing is possible.
The insulation is normally PVC.

3M
{Flat Twisted Pair/Ground Plane/Color Coded Wire Manufacturer}

Alpha
{Flat Cable Manufacturer}

Amphenol
{Flat PTFE Teflon-Internal Twisted Pair-Round and Flat-Zip}

Belden
{Flat Cable Manufacturer}

Consolidated Electronic Wire & Cable
{Extruded Flat}

Daburn
{Ribbon Cable Manufacturer}

WEICO Wire & Cable, Inc

Companies that produce Board Headers
For more information refer to the following page for a description of Cable Buses.

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Ribbon Cable: A flat cable of individually insulated conductors lying parallel and held together by means of adhesive.
Ribbon Cable may also be twisted on a per pair basis, but normally the twisted pairs go to parallel wires about every foot or so.
So that even a twisted-pair Ribbon Cable can be used with an Insulation Displacement Connector [IDC]. Definition of IDC.

{Ribbon Cable Manufacturers top}

There are a number of interface standards that use a flat cable as a physical interface.
The IDC portion of a ribbon cable interface is the cable end, while the board side is normally a Shrouded Header, both using 0.5 inch spacing.
Floppy Drive Interface [IDC to Header]
Hard Drive Interface [outdated version]
SCSI I Interface [outdated version]
IEEE-488 Interface [using an IDC and HPIB]:
... HPIB A-55138 Connector
... HPIB A-55139 Connector
... HPIB A-55140 Connector
Serial Debug Interface [IDC to Header]

Note that the interface standards listed are all in decline.
However many debug standards also use a ribbon cable, only because the data rate is not that high.
The standard ribbon cable does not allow for high speed operation.

Ribbon cable works best for short runs under about a meter in length, of course it depends on the electrical interface.
Remember if the wire pairs are twisted, they only un-twist in one foot increments.





30AWG Flat Cable
Ribbon Cable Structure

Government Specifications
MIL-DTL-49055 Cables, Power, Electrical, (Flexible, Flat, Unshielded), (Round Conductor), General Specification
MIL-DTL-49055/1 Cables, Electrical, (Flexible, Flat, Unshielded), (Round Conductor), (Wire Size 26, 7/34 or 28, 7/36 Stranding)
MIL-DTL-49055/11 Cables, Special Purpose, Electrical, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, Round Conductor, 150 C
MIL-DTL-49055/12 Cables, Special Purpose, Electrical, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, Round Conductor, 200 C
MIL-DTL-49055/18 Cables, Special Purpose, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, 28 AWG Stranded, Round Conductor 200C (1 mm Pitch)
MIL-DTL-49055/19 Cables, Special Purpose, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, 30 AWG Solid, Round Conductor 200C (.025 Inch Pitch)
MIL-DTL-49055/20 Cables, Special Purpose, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, 30 AWG Stranded, Round Conductor 200C (.025 Inch Pitch)
MIL-DTL-49055/21 Cables, Special Purpose, Flexible, Flat, Unshielded, 32 AWG Stranded, Round Conductor 200C (.025 Inch Pitch)
These documents are controlled by the department of defense and may be cancelled or with drawn at any time.

Note the government tends to use the term flat cable instead of ribbon cable.

A General listing of Ribbon Cable Manufacturers and Related sites.
The products the companies produced are listed under the company name which are indexed in alphabetic order.
The Wire and Cable listing is sub-divided at the top of the page.
All pages list OEM's [Original Equipment Manufacturers], second source or re-sellers are not listed.
OEM parts and equipment Distributors may be found by hitting the Distributors icon below.


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Modified 12/31/11
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