16 Strand Cables

I first tried to hand braid 16 strands, and gave up. Hand braiding 8 is hard enough. 16 strand is way to hard for me to keep track of the order. I had given up on a 16 strand DIY cable. Then I learned of Kumihimo. Kumihimo is a Japanese method of braiding using a loom or a small foam disk. I tested it with the extra cable and it turned out pretty good. 

I researched wire, got some samples, and decided on Mogami W2799 from Markertek. Markertek is slight more expensive than other places, but has "free" shipping, so the final costs was lower there. I wanted a 7 foot cable, and the braiding seems to reduce cable length by about 3:1, so I needed 21 feet, 16 strands. For quad cable, that means 84 feet of quad. I went completely out of my mind, and decided to make two cables, one red and blue, and one black and clear, so I needed 168 feet of quad.

Lesson learned: final cable is 7.5' long and only took about 21 to 22 feet. I way overbought.

The most horrible part of this process is the deconstruction of the quad cable. It's a hassle for 8 or 16 feet of cable, but for 168 feet it was a horrendous job. Cutting the insulation away wasn't too bad. I just use a foot long piece of wood on my lap, held an extacto knife, and pulled the wire through. Sure, it was a bit of a challenge to hold the blade and wire between two finger such that the blade cut in just a little, but not too bad.

Then comes the next onerous task of removing the shielding. With this cable the shielding is wrapped around the twisted wire, so it was a matter of securing the cable to a door know, and untwisting the shield. Not fun, but doable. I was able to liberate the conductor wires for each 84 section of main cable in an evening (one evening each).

The worst part of the whole cable with having to untwist the cable. I first tried doing it my hand with 84 feet of cable. Ug! I then cut the cable into 42 foot lengths, and used a drill to untwist. This helped quite a bit, but the wire still wanted to re-twist itself. It was just a matter of perseverance to keep untwisting until I was left with 8 x 42' strands.

After removing the insulation, I needed to remove the copper shield. More fun.

2017-Apr-01

Last night I completed the process to untwist the first two lengths of 42' of cable. I used some plastic wire bobbins to hold the wire. I'm hoping these hold them well enough when I'm braiding, as there is no way to do the braiding with the full length of wire loose.

2017-Apr -3

Well, I got the rest of the wire from Markertek, striped it, and wound it in bobbins! Then I realized I needed all 16 bobbins for the braiding, so I had to move the red and blue wire to a skick, then I had all the black and clear/copper wire and 8 empty bobbins.

I then took the 8 strands of 42' wire, 4 clear/copper and 4 black, and laid it out flat. I put a dowel in the middle, and folded the wire back to form 16 strands. Once I have the wire measured property, I tied a knot at the dowel. To measure the wire, I had one end of strand weighted down with books, then I weighted the dowel down with books, and folded the wire over until the ended were all the same. This took a few adjustments.

I wound it all up in bobbins, used rubberbands to hold the wire in the bobbins, and I was ready to braid!

At this point I probably have 5 or 6 hours invested in this cable. Many more to go.

2017-Apr-7

OK, it's been a few days and the braiding is almost done! I vastly overestimated the amount of wire I needed; by almost 2:1. Each bobbin has a little over 10' left. That 16 x 10 feet of wire, of 40' of quad leftover. I can probably make a whole other cable. 

Lesson Learned: Snap a picture of the starting pattern for each braid to document how you did it.

The braids I used on on the Kumihimo Braid Pattern page.

Well, I messed-up the second channel cable, so I had to unwind it and start over with that part of the "Y". Not fun.

Unwinding the cable braid is a real pain the arse. Lesson Learned: pay attention to the braiding! Once little mistake, and it will mess up the whole cable.

2017-Apr-9

Last night I finished the braiding! Only one, very minor "dropped stitch" in one of the thinner wires. Overall, it came out great! I still need to decide on the "Y" (naked, Viablue, Bead, something else) and solder the connectors. One question I had when I started this was about flexibility. Now that it's done, I feel it's plenty flexible for daily use. I am a little worried the insulation will dry out a little, get stiffer, and crack, but only time will tell.

Looks like the 2 small openings for the Viablue are 5mm each. According to my caliper, the smaller wires are 4mm. The thicker wire is 6.8mm

Here it is with a couple of beads I happen to have.

2017-Apr-10

I decided to keep the dark wood bead on the cable.

I soldered the Limo connectors for the utopia on today. Had a huge scare when setting it all up. Each Lemo connector has a very small pin that one solders the wire to. I put that pin in my Panavise, tightened the vise, and the pin shot out! My wife and I spent 10 minutes with flashlights looking for it. I was about to give up, when I decided to systematically clean the garage on the side the pin must of gone. After 10 minutes of cleaning, I found it. It must have been 15 feet away, and it was under some boxes. Wow. Those things are $20 each, and take like a month to order from Allied.

Also of note, one needs to set the up wires on the shorter wire of the channels from the Y first (one will be short because of the braiding). I used some heat shrink on the wires to keep the braid from unraveling. I stripped 4 wires, twisted them together, then soldered them. I did the same for the other four. I kept all the colors the same. I was too "in the zone" to take pics. Sorry. Next time. I used black heat shrink for one channel and red for the other. The connector slides over it and just a little shows, so it makes for good channel identification.

Once the wire is all measured, cut stripped, and solders for one channel, I did the second channel. I paid particular attention to make sure the cable for each channel was the same length. It's probably impossible to get it perfect, but even a 1/4" off will feel wrong when wearing the headphones. I think I was within a mm.

I then put some head shrink on the main cable, and evenly cut the wires at the bottom in preparation of soldering the balanced connector. 

Finally, I used a multi-meter to identify the wires (8 per channel, 4 per solder). Here's the final cable!