Hi all,
I am working on a project that requires moderately high voltage (up to 120Vpeak @ 0~500 Hz, low current) signals to be routed through a wearable belt or vest subject to a lot of stretch, so the wiring has to be small and flexible, but fairly rugged. The type of wire used on typical headphones would be ideal: braided, 2- or 3-conductor, embedded with cotton/polyester(?) fibers to safely take up any stretching loads, and of course extremely flexible. But, I can't seem to find that stuff available to buy, or even what to call it (obvious Google queries like "fiber-embedded wire", etc. don't turn up anything relevant).
Literally buying headphones off the shelf and sacrificing them for the cable isn't ideal - I don't think they'll handle that kind voltage anyway.
Anyone know what this type of wire is called, and/or where to buy it?
You need mains-voltage rated cabling at the least with those voltages - they are lethal, and particularly dangerous near the chest. Unless the currents are limited to well under a milliamp this is a dangerous, life-threatening proposition - why are such high voltages needed?
It's a wearable display of sorts using electroluminescent materials. Yes, I am aware of the hypothetical safety implications - besides the low current, there will be secondary insulation built into the garment itself to avoid any 'surprises' should the wiring fail so completely as to break its insulation. This sort of thing has been done before quite a lot at the hobbyist level without incident (or op-eds preaching against the dangers of such projects, a la the dire newspaper article I read today about the Cinnamon Challenge). People have used whatever wire was handy, but given the large number of elements to be wired, I want something that will last, and ideally allow building in enough slack to accommodate reasonable variations in body sizes.
Does anyone have suggestions as to my original question?
It looks like you can buy the fabric sleeving, run your wires through it, and then stabilize the ends with adhesive lined heat shrink tubing. There are also a few suppliers of "fabric heatshrink tubing" (Waytek, Techflex) but finding small diameters might be a problem.