The cheapest way to get cables is to know somebody who crimps it themselves, but for the majority of people probably buy from shitty places like walmart for a 1,000% upcharge.
just a heads up for anyone deciding to make their own cables, make sure you buy pass through rj45 ends or it becomes substantially more annoying to make a successful crimp. with pass through you can prep your cable and it doesn’t matter how long you make the strands you’re working with because you cut the excess off, with non-pass through you have to cut them to a specific size and if it’s too long when they bottom out, your conductors will stick out making your crimp weaker inviting poor connection issues later in the cable’s life.
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I like the ones that have a separate little sleeve with a pass though. You put the wires through it, clip them, then insert it as a unit into the connector.
Or ensuring the spool is still useful 15 years later while everything has migrated to SFP/QSFP
Nah, the remaining spool will be useful for the rest of its/your lifetime, it always comes in handy as a generic 4-pair twisted pair signal cable for any non-ethernet purpose. I’ve used my old spool twice this year; first for an m-bus cable to my power meter and then for a limit switch for my garage door.
That’s me lol. I’m still sitting on my spool of Cat6 I bought a few years ago. At pre-COVID prices it was approximately (CAD) $1 per termination, and $1 per 6 feet of cable.
Today at Infinite Cables and other Canadian stores I can buy premade lengths at almost those costs, shockingly. Prices really came down.
The cheapest way to get cables is to know somebody who crimps it themselves, but for the majority of people probably buy from shitty places like walmart for a 1,000% upcharge.
just a heads up for anyone deciding to make their own cables, make sure you buy pass through rj45 ends or it becomes substantially more annoying to make a successful crimp. with pass through you can prep your cable and it doesn’t matter how long you make the strands you’re working with because you cut the excess off, with non-pass through you have to cut them to a specific size and if it’s too long when they bottom out, your conductors will stick out making your crimp weaker inviting poor connection issues later in the cable’s life.
thank you for tuning in for this controls tech tip
I like the ones that have a separate little sleeve with a pass though. You put the wires through it, clip them, then insert it as a unit into the connector.
Like these.
Didn’t know this was a thing. Tytyty
Those are the way.
I bought a bulk bag of the shitty kind. Worst purchase of my life. I was too stubborn to throw them out and it took a decade+ to get through them all.
Pretty sure the biggest cost of crimping your own cables is finding a place to store the remaining spool.
Or ensuring the spool is still useful 15 years later while everything has migrated to SFP/QSFP
Nah, the remaining spool will be useful for the rest of its/your lifetime, it always comes in handy as a generic 4-pair twisted pair signal cable for any non-ethernet purpose. I’ve used my old spool twice this year; first for an m-bus cable to my power meter and then for a limit switch for my garage door.
That’s me lol. I’m still sitting on my spool of Cat6 I bought a few years ago. At pre-COVID prices it was approximately (CAD) $1 per termination, and $1 per 6 feet of cable.
Today at Infinite Cables and other Canadian stores I can buy premade lengths at almost those costs, shockingly. Prices really came down.