New Textiles 2011

A very convenient way to connect two separate electrical pieces is with a ribbon cable. The typical ribbon cable that I’ve run into is gray and very boring. It consists of many wires laid out side by side and then bonded together to make a flat strip. I decided to try and make my own by braided several wires together. The steps I followed to make the cable are outlined in the photos below.

I started with the wires from the inside of a typical ethernet cable. The inner wires are often many different colored, exactly what I was looking for.

To get to the inner wires, I first cut off one end of the wire.

I then stripped off the outer blue wrapping to reveal 8 strands of colored wire. I cut 8ft of each color to use in my final ribbon. Notice that the inner wires were are already plied together.

Thus, for each of the pairs of wires, I had to separate them into single wires instead of “yarns.”

Next, I tied each of the wires to a nail that I taped to a table top so that I could get tension on the wires and make braiding easier.

I arranged the wires so that the solid colors and the corresponding white-with-a-solid-stripe wires were side by side on the nail. In the future, I would not do this, because the pattern caused all the white wires to be side by side in the final braid and I prefer them to be more dispersed.

Then, I began braiding. I followed the instructions laid out in the instructables for an eight strand flat braid.

After a while, it started to look like this. To get the required 2 yards, I used about 7ft of the original 8ft allotted. It took 5-6 hours to get the braid done for just these 6ft. Due to this extreme time commitment (nearly 1 hour per foot), I would not suggest this braid for the future, but it was fine for this one time.

This is close up of one section of the finished ribbon.

A bit closer photo.

A side profile shot to show that the ribbon really is very thin.

Finished product.

A few measurements:
Width – 1 to 1.5cm
Thickness – 3mm
Total Length of Yarn – a little over 2 yards
Fiber Diameter –
Ply – 8 strands
Fiber Length – The wires were probably originally a filament.
Longest “Wavelength” (wavelength of one color of wire) – 8cm
Shortest “Wavelength” (wavelength of one color of wire)- 4.5cm
Conductivity – 0.125ohm/inch (12ohm/8ft)