Ribbon cable mfg. machine using heated, grooved rollers - uses plastics extruder to inject hot plastics around planar array of parallel conductors prior to passing between grooved rollers

摘要

The machine has a wire feeder which provides copper wires (12) parallel to each other in a coplanar array which runs over heated rollers (67,68). As extrusion machine (69) extrudes hot plastic around the layer of wires to provide the insulation between them. The rollers have cupped circular grooves around the periphery, and act one against the other to compress the hot plastic around the array of wires. The wires tend to move to the grooves, ensuring even spacing, and the plastics cools around the wires with a thin layer left between individual wires to ensure their attachment one to the other. One of the rollers has an associated cutter which lies parallel to the axis of the roller and is used to cut the flat cable to length. The depth of the groove closest to the cutter is less than 70% of that of furthest grooves.