Making the cable

The last post showed me assembling a pair of stenomod PCBs. The right hand board needs to communicate with the Arduino on the left hand board, so they're connected by a 10 conductor ribbon cable. Here's how the cable is made.

Start with these parts. Some 10 conductor ribbon cable cut to a desired length and an IDC socket.






Insert the cable so that it barely pokes out the opposite end.

Put into a vice, like this.

And clamp it down tight, but not too tight. The connections are made automatically when the two parts of the IDC connector are clamped together.


Fold the cable over like this, before inserting the strain relief part.






Push the strain relief down so it snaps in, and you're done with one side.






Repeat on the other side and the cable has been made.








Note that the connectors need to have their keys facing the right way on each end in order to fit into the box on each PCB. It takes some visualization but isn't hard to figure out.




Next we'll look at making the wooden decks.