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Replacing Ribbon Flex with CAT5?

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    Replacing Ribbon Flex with CAT5?

    Long story short - I have a master/slave inverter setup and I don't have the flex ribbon cable to connect them.

    The ribbon is one of those super flat, 11-pin connectors which apparently operates at high temperatures (it sits over the back of the panel - so I imagine it gets pretty hot there).

    The inverters have quite large copper circles/pads that connect to each pin of the connector - I assume so the engineers can easily measure readings on those pins?

    So I soldered some CAT5 to the connections - as it turned out only 8 of the pins were in use, and then 9th was a ground, so I just used a bit of speaker wire.

    I used a longer piece of cable than the original ribbon, so I could route it differently (so it didn't get as hot) and the outcome was that it didn't work - neither inverters switched on.

    I'm wondering :

    - Would the extra resistance of the longer cable, and thicker cable screw things up?
    - Would the twisted nature of CAT5 screw things up?

    Is there another solution to this problem - such as a cheap way of buying a generic flex ribbon?

    #2
    Re: Replacing Ribbon Flex with CAT5?

    Just thought I'd add - ribbon cable was the wrong terminoloy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_flat_cable

    It's one of these - so a lot thinner than the copper in my solid core CAT5!

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