Example 9: tested, fast images

As the resolution and scanning frequencies of modern digital visualisation systems increase, the amount of data to be transmitted inevitably grows rapidly.
The industry has adopted fast bus systems specifically for this purpose, which are used for similar data volumes in the consumer sector. Typical representatives here are bus systems such as FireWire (1394a and 1394b), USB (2.0), Gigabit Ethernet or CameraLink.

All of these bus systems require special cables, which are offered by countless manufacturers at spot prices, especially for the consumer sector. Many of these cables, which are often pre-assembled, are only developed and manufactured for static installation or low mechanical stress.

If such cables are exposed to industrial environments with all the known parameters, such as chemicals, electromagnetic compatibility and mechanical load, costly production failures are inevitable.

These are not only "genuine" failures, such as core rupture or short circuits of the stranded wire, but faults can also gradually become noticeable through changes in the capacitive specification with a reduction in the possible transmission rates and increased attenuation.
In the case of fibre optic cables, the use of inferior materials and an inadequate mechanical structure can lead to clouding of the fibres and thus also to reduced data rates.

Genuine troubleshooting on bus cables is only possible with very expensive equipment and a great deal of time. Depending on the location of the damage, faults may only occur sporadically during operation and cannot be detected at all when the system is stopped.

The main focus during development was on mechanically stable cable constructions in order to guarantee the capacitive, inductive and optical specifications over a high number of cycles.
The mechanical structure of the shields was also designed to ensure a long service life through the selection of materials and special manufacturing processes.

In industrial environments, it is not only the electrical and mechanical specifications that play a role, but also the resistance to a wide range of media such as oils, cooling lubricants or similar. The tried and tested outer sheath material TPE has already proven its suitability in many thousands of applications on other igus®® cables.

Despite the long cable lengths, especially with USB and FireWire, no impairment of the image quality could be detected even after this number of strokes. This non-scientific but practice-orientated test clearly proves the industrial suitability of these high-speed bus cables.
This test has not yet been completed and will be continued.