Blogs (57)
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Industrial Robot Cable vs. Surgical Robot Cable: 7 Engineering Differences That Determine Which Spec You Need
An engineer who's designed cables for FANUC or KUKA robotic arms will look at a surgical robot cable spec and assume it's a simpler problem—shorter cable, lower power, smaller forces. That assumption gets expensive quickly. The flex life number might even be lower than an…
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MRI-Compatible Cable Design: A Complete Guide to Non-Magnetic Materials, SAR Safety, and ASTM F2503 Classification
Can you put a coaxial cable inside an MRI scanner without creating artifacts, heating tissue, or turning the cable into a projectile? The answer is yes—but only if you understand exactly which materials, geometries, and construction techniques make a cable MRI-compatible versus MRI-dangerous. And the…
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Single-Use vs. Reusable Endoscope Cable: The Engineering Decision Every Device Developer Must Make
Last year, a medical device startup came to us with what seemed like a simple request: "We need a cable assembly for our single-use bronchoscope. We've been using the same design as our reusable prototype—just need to cost it down for disposable volumes." They were…
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Phase Matching in Micro Coaxial Cable Bundles: The Engineering Behind ±1% Tolerance
The TDR trace on channel 47 was off. Not by much—about 12 picoseconds longer than the mean of the other 127 channels in the bundle. That's 12 trillionths of a second. On the screen it looked like a tiny blip, barely outside the ±1% tolerance…
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ePTFE vs. FEP vs. PFA: Choosing the Right Dielectric for Micro Coaxial Cables
Most engineers assume that the lowest dielectric constant always wins. It makes intuitive sense—lower Dk means higher velocity of propagation, lower capacitance, and wider bandwidth. So ePTFE with its Dk of 1.3–1.7 should be the obvious choice over FEP (Dk 2.15) or PFA (Dk 2.06)…
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42 AWG vs. 44 AWG vs. 46 AWG Micro Coaxial Cable: The Complete Engineer's Selection Guide
0.064 mm. That's the individual strand diameter of a 42 AWG 7-strand micro coaxial conductor—roughly the width of a human hair. Drop to 46 AWG and each strand shrinks to about 0.040 mm. That 0.024 mm difference doesn't sound like much, but it changes everything:…
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NDT Coaxial Cable Selection Guide: Choosing the Right Cable for Ultrasonic Testing Applications
Pick the wrong NDT coaxial cable and you won't know it until you're staring at a noisy A-scan 40 feet up on scaffolding—at which point swapping cables means climbing down, walking back to the truck, and losing half an hour of inspection time. It's not…
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ISO 9001 vs. ISO 13485: What Medical Device OEMs Must Know When Qualifying a Cable Supplier
Last year, a medical device startup came to us after their cable supplier—an excellent ISO 9001-certified shop with 15 years of aerospace experience—failed their first OEM qualification audit. The cables were good. The testing was solid. But when the auditor asked for a design history…
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IVUS Catheter Cable vs. Ultrasound Probe Cable: Key Engineering Differences Every Device Engineer Should Know
A 46 AWG coaxial cable going into an IVUS catheter and a 42 AWG coaxial cable going into a cardiac ultrasound probe might look like close relatives on a datasheet. Both carry ultrasound signals. Both demand controlled impedance. Both use micro coaxial cable at their…
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Multi-Core (Round Bundle) vs. Ribbon (Flat) Micro Coaxial Cable — Engineering Comparison and Decision Guide
Micro coaxial cable is manufactured in two physical formats: round bundle (multi-core) and ribbon (flat). Both formats use the same individually shielded 50 Ω elements — identical conductor, dielectric, shield, and jacket construction at the element level. The difference is how elements are arranged: concentrically…
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Low Capacitance Micro Coaxial Cable — Why Capacitance Matters for Ultrasound and NDT Signal Quality
Cable capacitance is the silent performance thief in ultrasound and NDT systems. Every picofarad per meter of cable capacitance acts as a shunt to ground for the signal — attenuating high-frequency echo signals before they reach the beamformer or flaw detector input. At 10 MHz…
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50 Ohm vs. 75 Ohm Micro Coaxial Cable — Engineering Guide to Impedance Selection
Every micro coaxial cable has a characteristic impedance — the ratio of voltage to current for a traveling electromagnetic wave, determined by conductor diameter, dielectric constant, and shield geometry. The two standard impedances are 50 Ω and 75 Ω. Choosing incorrectly causes impedance mismatch reflections…