Is anyone making there own PWM’s. We’re home working on our practice bot and low and behold we need more pwm’s.
I would think that the wire, connectors and crimpers should be available to make custom lengths.
Anyone have a source?
Search on PWM & crimper. You will find this thread with the info you seek.
Joe J.
I recommend Hansen Hobbies. Their 1x3 housings, pins, and standard pwm wire are a perfect match for the prefabricated cables in the Kit of Parts. I am a very satisfied customer.
For some parts of our robot, we had to use some of our 22 AWG (I belive) wire that extended about 3-4 feet onto our robot, so the standard PWM wire is not as neccessary as it may seem. Blue White and Red or something along the base colors (Blk, white, red) will do.
I reccomend getting spools of wire to be completely honest, because you can make the PWM’s the right size and not have to worry about extensions etc.
Pavan.
Here is another thread with the specific molex connector numbers, and pay attention to Dr. Joe’s instructions in that thread.
For wire we used 3-conductor shielded wire; since the signal voltage is so low in the PWM inputs/outputs it is very sensitive to noise from motors and using a shielded cable rather than the IFI PWM cables can make a huge difference for things like yaw rate sensors or accelerometers. It’s a little stiffer too and less likely to flop its way into unwanted areas like gearboxes.
Why doesn’t somebody with all the parts make a step by step white paper already? It would be very interesting to see that, and then it would provide team with one more very very useful resource rather then buy expensive premade cables.
The crimper isn’t cheap either.
You’re right, it isn’t cheap. However, most teams would come out even or ahead compared to the IFI price for PWM cables ($19.95 for four) within a season or two. (And they’d have PWM cables to just the length they want!)
This is a pretty good source:
We use a $15 crimp tool and have had no problems. Use the economy wire though, because the deluxe wire is too fine.
The deluxe wire also has thicker insulation that doesn’t fit the standard connectors well.