Best place to purchase wire?

[currygoat11]

building a cocktail cabinet, and it occurred to me, I don't have any wire!

what would you guys recommend for where to purchase wiring, and/or other necessary items in this space?

Thank you

currygoat

[dmish82]

I bought a pack of 3- 20 ft rolls of 20 guage wire at Radio Shack for $5.50.

[currygoat11]

Radio Shack huh? hmm sounds easy enough. Thanks!

currygoat

[Ken Layton]

Try www.hosfelt.com

Radio Shack wire is crap.

[DrewKaree]

I bought a pack of 3- 20 ft rolls of 20 guage wire at Radio Shack for $5.50.

I used several $5 coupons to "purchase" all the extra switches and 12 rolls of wire from them.  

Radio Shack had the best "prices" for me.  I can always afford FREE  

Find an electrical supply house in your area.  I dunno if Grainger is in your area, but if Radio Shite didn't have the free coupons, I was going to go there....pick the color, they have it, and fairly cheap.

You can download the Grainger catalog from here

[GadgetGeek]

if you need disconnects too, I would suggest using Peale.

[Lilwolf]

Bob Roberts (the real one) has colored wire pretty cheap (not super but color coded).  The big thing is he sells 10 colors 10ft each for a few bucks more.  Great for simplifying wiring

then I bought some wire for barying for an electric invisible dog fense.  Does GREAT, all red, bends well, and crimps GREAT... and super cheap.  Bought 1000ft...

[patrickl]

I bought a few meters of signal cable with 36 (22 guage) strands. Each strands has a unique color. I understand not everybody likes different colors, but I kinda do and this was the easiest way to get many colors. Cost me 12 euro for 10 feet of cable (=360 feet wire)

Apart from that also I bought the whole wiring set from Ultimarc (10 colors wire 2 meters long, crimp tool, disconnects)

[Hoagie_one]

i just bought a couple big spools from meijer...prlly paid too much for em.

[Lilwolf]

btw, I would highly recommend NOT using solid core wire... Get stranded.  They bend easier and crimp to disconnects MUCH better... (ended up rewiring my entire cab because everytime I moved anything I would loose a connection).

solid core is nice for hacking some game pads... since you can poke them through when appropriate.

[gap]

I bought some stuff from this place:

http://www.circuitspecialists.com

They've good prices on lots of stuff that comes in handy when building a cab.  Some examples:

.187" female crimp disconnect thingies: $3.59 for 100

Self-adhesive wire tie mounts (their "low cost" ones):  
20mm: $2.22 for 100
25mm: $2.53 for 100
40mm: $5.86 for 100

22ga stranded wire: $5.00 for 100ft

Plastic cable ties: starting at 29 cents for 100 four-inch ties.

Plastic spiral wrap (for wrapping bundles of wire to make it neater):  starting at $2.49 for 10 meters.

Heat shrink tubing: starting at 59 cents for 4 ft.

I also bought a 10W stereo amp kit for my cab for $14.00.

In particular, I went crazy with their self-adhesive wire tie mounts, using a bunch of them in my cab and CP to keep the wiring neat.  A bag of 100 goes a long way.

[currygoat11]

Wow thanks for all the great information, appreciate it

[SirPeale]

I bought some stuff from this place:

http://www.circuitspecialists.com

What's their shipping like? In a large enough order their prices are decent.  Small stuff I'm sure it would be a killer.

[nathan118]

I just bought some wire from radioshack, so I'll let you know how it works.

I wonder if Ken has ever even used it.

[spiffyshoes]

They have 26g wire 100ft for $3.25 at Fry's Electronics/Outpost.com
22g wire 100ft for $4.35.

[Ken Layton]

I wonder if Ken has ever even used it.



Yes, I have. I have done over 500 game conversions and actually built at least 350 control panels from scratch. Radio Shack wire in the 22, 20, and 18 gauge is crap. I've bought wire from local auto parts stores that was 1,000 times better than Radio Shack's wire .

My local electronic parts jobber, Electronic Resourcing (Tumwater, Wash.) stocks Belden and Carol wire. I buy Belden mostly because it's very high quality wire. It costs more than other brands, but you get what you pay for.

I never use anything smaller than 22 gauge wire for control panel wiring.

[gap]

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly makes a wire crappy?

I used 20ga stranded stuff from RatShack for my CP, before seeing this thread.

It's strands of copper wrapped with plastic-like sheath.  How does someone mess that up?

Is the copper impure, resulting in a higher resistance or somesuch?  Or is the sheathing prone to cracking or some other form of failure?

It's fairly low voltage and low current under my CP.  Is there something I should be worried about?

[currygoat11]

<<but what exactly makes a wire crappy?>>

I agree, how can Radio Shack wire be that bad?  Please elaborate..

[MonitorGuru]

Just buy old printer cables in the 50 cent bucket at your local thrift store !   SERIOUSLY.

Inside, most of them have 25 individual strands of wire, all uniquely color coded as well without duplicates.  

It won't work for power wire, but will work for all interface (joystick, trackball, spinner, buttons) connections.  

[spiffyshoes]

It's hard to describe.  Once you see it though.  If your used to using better wire you'll recognize the difference.

[Ken Layton]

The Radio Shack stranded wire is waayyy too stiff. The individual strands break too easily. The insulation is too thin and it melts too easily when you are soldering the copper strands. In short -- it's cheap, poorly manufactured wire.

The insulation on their solid wire is also too thin and melts too easily.

[currygoat11]

I went to www.circuitspecialists.com. The prices on the items are reasonable. Total came to $10.  However the shipping was $9 to VA, cheapest selection UPS ground.

I think that's too much.....  anyone know any other online retailers with less shipping charges?

currygoat

[gap]

Yeah, their shipping isn't that great.  But they had other stuff that I needed, so it came to a lower percentage of a larger order.

female .187" crimp disconnects
heat shrink tubing
self-adhesive wire tie mounts
plastic wire ties

I also got their 10watt stereo amp kit and some spirial wire wrap.

[SirPeale]

I've got wire (22g) on my site.  Quick disconnects too.  OOS on the QDs but will be getting an order to refill stock tomorrow.

[nathan118]

Well, I'll be starting on my control panel soon, so I'll let people know how the radioshack wire works out. I'm not soldering anything, so I'll let you know how just using quick disconnects work.

It's different to say "radioshack wire is bad" and "radioshack wire is average." You make it sound like your control panel won't even work if you dare use it. To test my ipac I used single strands of cat5 cable, and that worked! I'm not saying it's the best stuff ever, but maybe it just doesn't measure up to your standards (which aren't everyone elses).