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Instrumentation Cables
Instrumentation Cable Assembly Manufacturer and Supplier
We engineer and manufacture instrument cables for the test and measurement industry. In addition to OEM instruments cables, we provide industrial automation and process control
cables. In this context, one of our specialties is GPIB cable (General Purpose Interface Bus) or IEEE 488 cable design and manufacturing.
Please see below some of the key types of instrument cables we offer:
Instrument Cables - GPIB tutorial
The GPIB / IEEE 488 interface bus, also known as the General Purpose Interface Bus "GPIB," is
well established in the electronics industry. It represents a robust means of providing control of remote test and measurement instruments via high quality instruments cables. Although the
GPIB cable interface has been in widespread use since the early 1970s, the use of the GPIB interface isfinding new vitality in view of its convenienceand availability. The GPIB cable and
GPIB connectors are in widespread use and are available from many stockists and suppliers.
The GPIB interface is an 8 bit parallel interface system which incorporates:
The GPIB cable consists of 24 lines, with the remaining lines occupied by ground wires. The maximum data transfer rate is determined by a number of factors, but is about 1Mb/s.
GPIB Interface Connectors
The connector used for the IEEE 488 bus is standardized as a 24-way Amphenol 57 series type. This provides an ideal physical interface for the standard. The IEEE 488 or GPIB connector is
very similar in format to those that were used for parallel printer ports on PCs. This makes the GPIB cable a sufficiently rugged connection for use in a variety of test equipment and test and
measurement environments where unprotected connectors may not survive well.
An additional advantage of the GPIB connector is that it has a screw-lock. In this way, once the
connectors have been mated the screw-lock can be used to secure the connectors together. In this way movements of the GPIB cables are unlikely to cause any intermittent connections. With
complicated electronics systems such as automatic test systems, intermittent signals in instrument cables can cause significant problems which can be difficult to isolate and cure. By
using a GPIB connector that has a screw-lock this problem can be overcome.
The basic female connector used on the GPIB cable applications follows the standard format for
the Amphenol57 series, however, the GPIB cable connector has some differences. The basic GPIB cable connector has a male to female capability. In this several GPIB cables connectors
can be "piggy-backed" on top of each other. This helps the physical setting up of the bus and prevents complications with special connection boxes or star points, etc.
There are two different types of screwlockused on the GPIB cables. The metric threads are Black
whereas English threads are Silver. Unfortunately the two will not mate together. The most common type of screwlock is the black metric version.
GPIB Connector Pinout
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Multi-meter cables
GPIB cables