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Termination of shield on ribbon cable
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ahbushnell:
I have a application with a ribbon cable that is shielded.  I would like suggestions on bringing out a wire to terminate the shield.  The shield is a copper wire mesh. I was thinking about soldering a wire to the shield and covering with heat shrink.  I have looked on line and I have not seen any examples. 

Thanks
Andy
coppercone2:
Since its a ribbon cable you can also use a braid of the same dimension I guess.

With normal cables you leave the wire in contact with the braid exposed a bit, then do a solder joint and fold it back over the insulation and then put heat shrink on top of it, I don't think you typically solder to the braid itself because its thin wire and it can break from deformation, unless your really careful and have good strain relief.

If you do the above method then the insulation of the cable is pressed into the soldered joint and the heatshrink is firm so you have good strain relief around the soldered area, unless you have a real connector that uses a collet.

Not sure but you can maybe put a harder backing plate out of plastic in between the cable and the joint to firm it up and offer strain relief, perhaps with some double sided tape.

Make sure the solder does not flow under the insulation where it can crack, leave enough braid exposed so there is a non-soldered fold to the junction.

What I can't answer is how to use heat shrink in this application without a backing plate, since it will fold the ribbon cable. I think you need one. Or maybe two to make a sandwich.

I would ask for a vibration test to be conducted since its pretty weird.
ahbushnell:
Thanks,

Since they sell the cables I would think there would be  products for termination. 

wraper:
The only things with shielding I've seen were for round ribbon cable like DB-25(LPT) and connectors for external use on panel, basically usual IDC connector placed into metal shell. For internal use I would suggest simple IDC connector + additional fast-on connector for shield.
coppercone2:
I got stuck its a junction in the middle of a cable i.e. to terminate it to some random place on the chassis thats convenient for assembly. Otherwise I would recommend a connector too. Unless its some weird high reliability stuff  :scared:

But not a IDC. Those suck. Try to find some kind of connector like a DIN DBx connector that has a ribbon cable acceptance and solder or crimps. I find quite a bit of failed IDC, especially MTA in things like lab PSU, particularly on the front panel where the potentiometers are. Sorensen seems notorious for this. I hate IDC. I would recommend soldering over IDC. I think all 3 of my broken soresen power suppies had issues with the IDC MTA style connectors.

My backup battery had a soldered ribbon cable with strain relief and that failed too, but to be fair the ribbon cable they used was complete garbage and it was stiff as hell for some reason. It was one of those plastic sandwich ribbon PCB cables not real ribbon cable IIRC.
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