Kelsey Logo

Kelsey: The Cable and Interconnection Specialist

Home Cable Power Distribution Metalwork Custom Manufacturing Useful Info
Cable Design: The key elements: Core and Stranding
The technology behind Kelsey ES and HPC cable
Introduction
Requirements
Design
Insulation
The Core
Screen
Mechanical
Results
Speaker cable
Back home
Core size and stranding
Ideal CoreA tube is the best shape for a conductor. This is because electricity travels best on the surface of a conductor and a tube has a large surface area (read more). The example shown here is a high frequency transmitter mast feed.

Stranding cores is a way to make a practical conductor with a lot of surface area; for example, the surface of the strands in a 1.8mm diameter wire made up of 800 strands add up to that of a 50mm tube.

Whether stranded cores are better than solid depends on the application:
Strands
  • Fine stranded cores are good for high frequency transmission and are flexible but expensive.
  • Thicker strands cost lest but are less flexible and not so good at high frequencies as the stronger current concentrations cause energy to dissipate as electro-magnetically induced vibrations.
  • Solid core cable is stiff, but can be made very precisely and cheaply and is good for IDC termination.

    • Electrically, the larger the conductor gauge, the better. However, in low level signal applications the gauge can have less of an effect on signal attenuation and accuracy than the dielectric. Wire gauge becomes more of a factor for signals on longer distance transmissions (e.g. several hundred metres).
    Fuzion
    ® Kelsey is the interconnection brand of Fuzion plc UK : www.fuzion.co.uk : +44(0)1932 882222