sahib
Well-known member
I was making some 34 way ribbon cables over the weekend. I had the last (about)1.5m length on the reel. I cut it in half to make two assemblies. I fitted the cable socket on one end and the PCB transition header on the other as usual. Tested continuity and one was fine but on the other one 1/3 of the wires towards one side of the width of the cable were all shorted. I cut out the transition header and checked it on the cable socket side and the shorts disappeared. So, I thought that I obviously misaligned the transition header. Fitted another one, shorts appeared again. On measuring the cable width it turned out hat the cable was just over 1mm narrower on the transition header end. The explanation could only be that it was stretched during reeling. So, it was aligning with the grooves to begin with but then starting to stagger. The cable is of good quality but is not like the expensive brands like Alpha. Anyhow, watch out if you are at the end of a reel.
