Please excuse me if a topic like this already exists. I haven't checked it, but somehow I doubt it does. I hope the category fits.
I've always wondered why I can buy 305m (1000ft.) of ethernet cable for around 50eur (approx. 55usd), but in some cases I'd need to pay hundred bucks for the same length of wire (single conductor with the same cross sectional area usually it's 24AWG or 0.25mm2, that's used in ethernet cables). Now, thicker conductors are not as much of a problem. I can buy 0.75mm wire that's used for house wiring, for roughly 60eur for 305m. That's still way more expensive than ethernet cable, though (305m at 2mm2 combined area or 8x 305m of wire at 0.25mm2).
I know the wires inside an ethernet cable have thinner insulation but for low voltage inside a case of something or for general experimentation, they're perfectly good. The problem of course is getting the wires out of the cable itself and I can't find a comparably cheap alternative.
You might say it's cheaper because the wires inside are usually solid core but the prices are not that different between solid and stranded. Yeah, ethernet cable is widely used product and the ones who manufacture it, use bulk material, but still, the much more complicated product to manufacture ends being cheaper + it has more copper. How's that?
Also, why don't ethernet cable manufacturers offer raw wires for hobbyists, since they can make them so cheap- Just imagine... 8x305m = 2440m (8000ft) of 0.25mm2 (0.24awg) wire for 50 bucks (and that's from the price of an already manufactured cable), while I'd have to pay like 10 times that for single conductor if I wanted to buy it!
I searched and I searched, but found nothing that comes even close to the price per meter of wire I'd get in an ethernet cable.
Because the producer in China only makes and sells 1,000 foot spools of the wire. All the smaller quantities have been taken from those spools and repacked into smaller quantities. Each process adds cost. That end cost is what you are paying. If you want to begin selling smaller quantities of the wire, you will soon see why the costs go up.
Here in the UK, the 'cheap alternative' I use is 8 core alarm flex with cores of 0.22mm2 cross sectional area.
Each flexible core wire consists of 7 strands of wire.
The cable has a string 'rip cord'. Simply grab hold of the rip cord and pull. The outer sheath of the cable then gets sliced away and opened up. The inner core wires can then be easily removed and used on Arduino projects.
It is currently around £20 for 50m of cable = 400m of core wire.
Thanks for response, Paul, but I think you misunderstood me a little bit.
It's not a problem for me to buy 1000ft of ethernet cable. It's a problem to separate out the individual conductors. I'd gladly buy 8 differently colored wires that the cable contains (1000ft. of each). Is it hard for chinese to just avoid twisting and packing those wires into another insulator?
I'd imagine they first produce the wires anyways, so why not avoid additional steps of making the cable and sell the wires separately. If anything it would be less work for them, except if the machine can only make ethernet cable directly (if the wire isn't produced separately, as I thought) - I don't know anything about that process, so this could be a possible problem.
So, let's say they start with, (I don't know) 10000's of ft. of wire (each color), to make the cable; they make twisted pairs, wrap them with foil and add outer insulator. Ok. So, why not just cut 1000ft. of each wire and sell them in pack of 8 colors? That's even less work than to make a cable, but the price would still be extremely low.
But why can't we get raw wires on spools at the same or even lower price (less work for manufacturer to make wires only and you avoid additional work of getting them out of the cable).
Ethernet cable ordinarily isn't tinned.
Spools of hook-up solid core usually are.
Not that plain copper is not available, but don't compare apples to oranges.
Yeah, it HAS to be "distribution cost". There is probably more Ethernet cable sold than any particular size/type/color of hookup wire. (Supply and demand.)
And if it's from eBay or AliExpress, etc., it might be defective or counterfeit and might not meet the "CAT" specs, although that may not matter for hobby use.
Maybe something like this? A long time ago I used a tool that split Romex (house AC wiring) sheathing lengthwise and maybe there's something like that for Ethernet cable.
The cores are bundled with a very very fine cotton string and also a heavier string. I don't know what the fine cotton string does, it maybe something to aid manufacture. The heavier string is indeed called a rip cord, and it is used to put a slit in the outer casing. It is quite a common thing in the electrical world.
When electricians work with 2.5mm2 or 1mm2 twin and earth electrical cable, they grab hold of the earth core with their side cutters, and pull the core in such a way that it splits the outer casing. In this case the copper earth core acts as a rip cord.
Economy of scale - CAT6 is manufactured in vast quantities, from production lines dedicated to one product only (possibly an entire factory ?). Such economies of scale will also apply to mains cable, although this comes in several sizes - mains cabling has a lot more insulation and its PVC, not PE too.
For more varied kinds of wire the manufacture is more likely to be done in batches with significant setup costs per run - changing the insulation colour requires the entire extruder to be purged of the previous colour surely?
And then you come to the complexity of distributing 1000's of kinds of wire (many colours x many gauges x many strand variants) v. one kind of wire (CAT6). More lines to stock means increased storage and administration costs.
And of course the thing you've probably glossed over is that the cheaper CAT6 probably uses 26 gauge not 24 gauge - you definitely pay more for more copper all else being equal.
And you would be right.
The string in cables doesn't stretch (much) and helps prevent the soft copper wire from stretching when pulling through conduit or long trays. How would you like to pull hundreds of feet of CAT6 only to discover that one of the runs has an open because of stretching?
