|
Make Your Own Network Cables Step 2 - Preparing the wire We are ready to begin making our cable. Stripping the wire First, we must strip the outer casing from the cable. You'll want to strip about 1/2 inch of the casing. The key, and this is critical, is to cut and remove the outer casing without even the tiniest of nicks on the twisted pair wires. If you do nick the wires (as we did four or five times at first), simply cut off an inch or two of the cable and start again. Our crimping tool includes a built-in wire stripper. You simply insert the wire into this area of the crimping tool until it stops. Then close the handle and the proper amount of the outer casing is cut and ready to be pulled off. However, since we are using rounded cable, closing the handle even half way caused the tool to cut into the twisted pair wires. The technique we found worked best with this tool was to insert the wire, and then close the handle until the first click of the built-in ratchet mechanism. We then twirled the wire while still inserted in the tool. This scored the outer casing all the way around. We then pulled the 1/2 inch of casing off the cable.
Of course, you can use a Cyclops or the wire stripper of your choice to remove the outer casing. Untwisting the wires Now with the twisted pair wires exposed, you can begin to untwist them and arrange them in the proper order (see Step 1 for more on that order). The key here is to not untwist more than you need to and, if at all possible, not more than 1/2 inch. That's because the specification calls for not more than that to be untwisted or risk the possibility of affecting the network's performance. As you can see in this photo, we have untwisted the wires and arranged them in the proper order. We actually have exposed more of the wires than necessary here in order to make it clearer in the photo. According to the specs, you'll want to try this with less of the wires untwisted. However, we can tell you that we made a few cables with about this much wire untwisted and did not notice any problems on our network.
Again, the order of the cables (from the top in this photo) should be: Now, after arranging the wires spread out like this, you should flatten all of the wires and bring them in tight to each other. This gets them ready to insert into the plug so, ultimately, all 8 wires should be so close that the total width is about that of an RJ45 plug. If the wires are not the identical length, you can use a pair of wire cutters to cut them off at the same length.
With the cable fully prepared, we are ready to move on to Step 3 - Attaching the plug.
All content © 1998-2007 by homePCnetwork, inc.
|
