{"id":5648,"date":"2023-04-13T15:20:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T07:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ray-tron.com\/?p=5648"},"modified":"2023-09-01T13:55:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T05:55:10","slug":"ele5728","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ray-tron.com\/en\/ele5728\/","title":{"rendered":"The difference between shielded and unshielded cables. What is the shielded cable used for?"},"content":{"rendered":"
There are two situations where shielded cable should be used. The first situation is when the cable will be run near potential sources of EMI. An industrial facility is a good example where there may be large motors and other heavy current-drawing machines.<\/p>\n
The second situation is when any degradation or corruption of the transmitted signal can have devastating or expensive consequences. An example is equipment with motion, where a spurious signal could cause unexpected motion with potentially harmful consequences. Another example is when corruption of the transmitted data can cause inconvenience or lead to inaccurate records, perhaps wrong decisions.<\/p>\n
Cables used in safety-critical applications should always be shielded to prevent accidents.<\/p>\n
Types of cable shielding<\/p>\n
There are two main methods of adding shielding to cables. The cable is either wrapped in a thin, polyester-backed aluminum foil or surrounded by a copper braid. A variation of braiding is to wrap a helix of wire around the conductor, a so-called "spiral" shield. Choosing the most appropriate technology requires understanding how their strengths and weaknesses meet the needs of the application.<\/p>\n
In some environments, the consequences of EMI can be highly destructive and using both types of shielding in the cable may be desirable.<\/p>\n