How to coil cables

[zapta]

Dealing with cables?

Thought that you know how to coil them? 

Check this

[robrenz]

That is excellent! A perfect example of a subtle detail making a huge difference.

[BravoV]

+1 like 

[SeanB]

Will practice that a lot now.

[Six_Shooter]

+1 like 

+1 more

[Kryoclasm]

 

[Vgkid]

That is a rather interesting method of wrapping cables, I will need t o try it. I have always twisted the cable slightly as  I have wrapped it.

[David_AVD]

"Under and over" wrapping is very quick and easy once you get the hang of it.  Just make sure you don't pull the end through the coil when unwrapping as you'll end up with a hell of a mess.   

[John Coloccia]

This is something I try to teach my customers when it comes up.  They're usually like, "So What?" until I wrap a couple of 20' cables and show them I can take mine and stretch it across a stage and it's flat, but doing it their way I have to go and untwist the entire thing.  THEN the light bulb comes on and they get it.  Also, sound guys like being able to take a coil of cable and toss it across a stage for 50' and it lays flat...and I like being able to do that with an extension cord. 

[defarijf]

I will have to try it next time I coil an extension cord.

[baljemmett]

I remember being shown this many years ago when coiling some Ethernet coax (by a former recording engineer, as it happens!)  Didn't manage to quite get the hang of it then, but I remember the suggestion every time I'm faced with a cable that isn't behaving properly.  Must find one and practice properly sometime...

[David_AVD]

The mechanics of it can seem odd when you're learning under and over wrapping, but once you have the muscle memory it requires no effort at all.

[Stonent]

I remember in school the shop teacher showing us the "correct" way to wrap cords for power tools to reduce the stress on the cable and plug. It wasn't this technique but I think there was definitely a component of doing something and then doing the opposite. He said just doing a circular wrap can either cause the wires to overtwist inside the cable or untwist.

[pickle9000]

My neighbor Old Fred taught me when I was 5 or 6. He was a retired merchant marine and had some awesome stories. I wonder if it's a nautical thing? 

[John Coloccia]

It happens anytime you coil something up, rope included.  Think about this for a minute.  Forget about rolling up a rope.  What if you wanted to make a helical coil out of some flat ribbon.  You might take the ribbon and start wrapping it up a dowel.  Then you remove the dowel and you're left with a spiral of the ribbon.  Now grab the ends of the ribbon and pull.  The spiral gets tighter and tighter but it never gets straight because, and you end up with all these tight twists in the ribbon.  Every time around you're also introducing a twist.

So rope...wire....aluminum foil....a roll of toilet paper....doesn't matter.  Anytime you roll something up flat, you're also twisting one end in relation to the other end.  So you have to introduce an anti-twist for every twist you put in.

It's tough to see why if you're just thinking of rope, but if you think of it as if you're making a helix (which you basically are) it's a lot easier to envision what's going on.

[dfmischler]

Learned this a long time ago.  Even more important for air hose, for example.

This is also why it is so important to unroll wire you buy on a spool (or in a coil) rather than pulling it off the end.

[Maxlor]

Well, I for one didn't have an experienced cable expert looking over my shoulder, teaching me things. This is brilliant, love it! I'll try it first with my earphones that I untangle and untwist every morning...

[codeboy2k]

I learned the over-under technique from my dad when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old back in the 70's .  It's really fast and easy to do.

He worked in radio, I was always helping him setup or tear down at a remote site and wrapping dozens upon dozens of cables with him.

[amyk]

It happens anytime you coil something up, rope included.  Think about this for a minute.  Forget about rolling up a rope.  What if you wanted to make a helical coil out of some flat ribbon.  You might take the ribbon and start wrapping it up a dowel.  Then you remove the dowel and you're left with a spiral of the ribbon.  Now grab the ends of the ribbon and pull.  The spiral gets tighter and tighter but it never gets straight because, and you end up with all these tight twists in the ribbon.  Every time around you're also introducing a twist.

That also explains why a lot of headphones now have flat cables... to discourage people from just twisting them when they coil them up. And some people still manage to get those ones all twisted into spirals...

[G7PSK]

Try doing that on heavy cable like say 50  meters of 500 welding cable. 

[dfmischler]

Try doing that on heavy cable like say 50  meters of 500 welding cable. 

You can do the same thing with the coil flat on the ground.  Or on a pallet (you might need the fork lift truck to move a 50 meter coil of big welding cable).  My welding cables aren't that long, and my biggest welder at the moment is a Miller DialArc 250 AC/DC (mine's older than the one in the pic, and I paid $100 for it), so I'm not sure how heavy that much cable would be.

[lapm]

All these years i have been wrapping my cables wrong. 

[mcinque]

  thanks for sharing!

[woox2k]

Very, very useful information, thank you!
So far, like most of the people, i have done it wrong and thought there has to be a better way