Industrial Network Cables

Industrial network cables are used in industrial applications such as automation, control and data acquisition. There are three basic types of products: bulk cables, cable assemblies, or patch cables or patch cords. Bulk cables are sold by the foot or in reels. Cable assemblies are collections of wires or cables banded into a single unit with connectors on at least one end. Patch cables or patch cords are flexible cables that are terminated at both ends with a plug. For each type of industrial network cable, product specifications include technology, industry, cable construction, cable performance, and connector configuration. For some industrial network cables, specifications include fieldbus type, SCSI standard, or Ethernet type. Approvals, certifications, and features are additional parameters to consider when selecting industrial network cables. 

Industrial network cables differ in terms of technology and industry. Choices for technology include fibre channel, fieldbus, general-purpose interface bus (GPIB), small computer system interface (SCSI), and universal serial bus (USB). Industrial network cables that use Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet or High Speed Ethernet (HSE) are also available. IEEE 1394 or FireWire^® , a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., is an interface standard adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for very fast digital data transfers such as streaming video. InfiniBand^®, a registered trademark of system I/O Inc., is a bus architecture that is grounded in channel-based I/O, a model used with mainframe computers. In terms of industry, industrial network cables are used in automotive, camera or imaging, instrumentation and control, medical, military and defense, networking, power distribution, telecommunications, and video applications. 

Selecting industrial network cables requires an analysis of cable construction, cable performance, and connector configuration. Choices for cable construction include Cat 5, Cat 6, coaxial, triaxial, fiber optic, twisted pair, instrumentation tray cable (ITC), power limited tray cable (PLTC), and multi-signal or composite. Cable length, number of conductors, rated voltage, and operating temperature are important cable performance parameters to consider. There are many types of connector configurations for industrial network cables. Choices include AdvancedTCA (ATCA), BNC, Centronics, Micro Centronics 50, Micro Centronics 60, Micro Centronics 68, CompactPCI (cPCI), DB25, DB50, DB68, flexible flat connectors (FPC), flat printed circuit connectors (FPC), gigabit interface converters (GBIC), high-speed serial data connection (HSSDC) and HSSDC2, and high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI). Industrial cables that use USB Type A and USB Type B connector configurations are also available in male-male, male-female, and female-female styles.  

Fieldbus cables, SCSI cables, and Ethernet cables carry additional product specifications. There are many different fieldbus types for industrial network cables, including AS-interface (AS-i), ARCNET, BITBUS, CANbus, ControlNET, DeviceNet, Foundation Fieldbus, HART^® (Hart Communication Foundation), MODBUS^® (Modbus-IDA), PROFIBUS^® (PROFIBUS International), P-Net, and SDS. There are several main SCSI standards: SCSI-1, wide SCSI, wide ultra SCSI, SCSI-2, Ultra 2 SCSI, SCSI-3, Ultra 3 SCSI (Ultra 160) and serial SCSI. There are also many different types of Ethernet for industrial network cables. Choices include 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, 100Base-FX, 1000Base-T, and 1000Base-LX or 1000Base-SX. Some industrial network cables are designed for extreme environments or cleanrooms. Others are shielded or feature hydra assemblies for telecommunication applications. Standards, approvals and certifications include Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Mark), and the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Mark.

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Part Numbers for Network Cables