Contributed by Jody Muelaner Good cable management is vital to the accurate and reliable operation of an industrial robot. Cables that catch and snag will affect the accuracy of a robot. Over time they will result in unplanned maintenance and excessive downtime. Robotic cell integrators have identified cable issues as the most significant cause of […]
Basics
Inside data centers: Cabling considerations for new FibreChannel links
A Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) and Inter-Switch-Link (ISL) interfaces are an important part of modern data-center systems, including in hyperscale or enterprise ones. FC SAN is a high-speed network that connects servers and storage devices, and the Inter Switch-Link joins and maintains the traffic flow between switches and routers. A benefit to […]
How do you specify plastic cable carriers?
Contributed by Jody Muelaner Plastic cable carriers are fitted to machines to protect and guide cables and hoses. Cable carriers are constructed as a chain of rigid plastic sections. These form an articulated rectangular box section through which cables and hoses are inserted. Enclosing the cables and hoses prevents some forms of damage. The articulated […]
How cable technology is evolving to meet high-performance networking
Persistent memory has become one key technology for the cloud as speed, efficiency, and volume at data centers advance. In high-performance computing, the cloud often requires data to be moved between multiple physical systems. Data may also be replicated for redundancy and protection, or it can be split across physical systems for performance. High-performance networking […]
An update on VFD cables’ design requirements
VFD cables have had to adjust over the years to meet the changing needs of the motors they run. New changes in the Electrical Installation Code will facilitate more updates in the coming years. Contributed by Neal Allen, Vice President of Engineering, HELUKABEL USA The variable frequency drive (VFD) cable business has become an extremely […]
Where are Active Optical Cables used?
AOCs are typically used in production line applications, where high-resolution images are used for quality control, or to extend the control and video signals of a machine or computer that may be 50-200 ft away. For example, by using AOCs, clean room manufacturing can now be controlled several hundreds of feet away in a main […]
What are Active Optical Cables?
The proliferation of bandwidth-hungry applications such as 4K/8K/10K video, as well as augmented and virtual reality, are all fueling the need for reliable, faster data transmission between sources and displays. At lengths of 5 m and beyond, copper cables are simply no longer able to keep up with this insatiable bandwidth demand at the speeds […]
What type of cable management should you use in your motion control systems?
Where there is a myriad of cables and wiring, cable management becomes an issue. A simple, low-cost form of cable management uses twist-tie bundlers that groups wires and cables together. However, such bundling can pose weight problems that cause sagging and put undue strain on cables. For stationary applications, cable trays safely and cleanly route […]
Why should you certify LAN cabling installation?
LAN cable certifiers are the go-to method of testing twisted pair cabling. But why do installers need to certify cabling? And what is the difference between a certifier and other types of LAN testers? In this post, Dan Barrera, Global Product Manager from IDEAL Networks offers some insight. “Put simply, the first two elements of […]
Shielding and filtering are not independent of one another
By Keith Armstrong, C.Eng(UK), FIEE/IET, Senior MIEEE, ACGI, EurIng(Gp1) on behalf of EMC Standards Filtering and shielding have to be designed together, as a system. They simply cannot provide their shielding or filtering independently of each other. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked to fix an EMC problem, only […]
