MPCNC flatness tolerance for rails wire question

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
1

So I am building my rig and the other night I was setting the first set of rails. I was using a digital caliper to measure and for an hour I chased my tail but the best I could do was to get the post heights equal to about 2/10’s of a mm is that good enough.

My Base is MDF so I am not sure just how flat that is to begin with.

Also I have some CAT6(an electrician friend gave it to me years ago) cable as far as I can tell it is either AWG 23 or 24 so I am thinking it is OK to do the wiring, am I missing something?

2

CAT6 should be 23AWG

Is it Cat6 or Cat6E/A?

3

I think just CAT6 but I will have to check when I get home from work.

4

I think even with 24 AWG, you should be good up to 3.5A if it’s not stranded…

But I’ll let someone else tell you whether there are other issues that might come up if you use it

5

Non-stranded wire is likely to eventually fatigue and break if used where it needs to move regularly.

1 Like
6

I was curious, so using google-fu, 24 gauge solid or stranded has information to imply that it’s capable of handling up to 7.5 amps.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m also Not an electrician or a double E.

Any chance the electrician friend that gave you the wire can provide his expertise?

7

cat6 is rated up to 4a, 2.8 is the recommended high though. Nema17 maxes at 2a. It’s fine.

8

Agreed. If it’s stranded wire it will be good for a long time. If it’s solid, you’ll start chasing intermittent failures all over the place much sooner than you would for wearing out stranded wire.

9

It is 6+ and it is solid, it’s been in the basement for over a decade so it can stay there a bit longer. after the bill so far a few more bucks on the proper wire won’t break me.

10

If you like the size and connectors for Cat6 you can always get patch cables. They’re made from stranded wire instead of solid.

1 Like
11

I had my MPCNC wired on Cat5E and it worked perfectly fine :slight_smile: It is especially nice for the endstops to have a color-coded reference on the other end of your cable :smiley:

12

I found a local supplier for 6/24 shielded stranded wire that I can buy by the meter and yes I was not even going to attempt the wiring without some color code.

13

Yes, since you are going to plane your spoilboard anyway after tramming the router. :slightly_smiling_face:

14

Good choice to not use that solid core. Stranded cat n is still a reasonable option but it’s worth noting that copper clad aluminum (CCA or CCAW) is becoming more common at the low end. I’d make sure that it’s pure copper for lowest risk of fracturing with the repeated movement it’s going to be subjected to.