Bench Wire Conection Materials

[corrado33]

Hi all,
I realize there is another thread below this one on a similar topic, but I'm asking different questions.

I recently picked up a few rolls of probe wire (soft, silicone insulated, very flexible, labeled probe wire). I forget what the part number is (I'm at work at the moment.) I want to make myself a good variety of bench connections/leads. Not just for measurements, but also for connections to power supplies. I quick search online shows that test probe wire varies from "a few amps" to 6A (max I've found).

My question is this, would you just use the probe wire to make the power connection wires or simply buy some other wire? In the latter case, what wire would you suggest? I have a few power connection wires currently, but they're just normal stranded pretty thick wire. I generally use it for my battery charger, which can draw a good amount of amps in certain cases. It's just getting annoying switching them back and forth.

[128er]

I'm using this wires for all sort of powering things on my bench.

http://products.lappgroup.com/online-catalogue/power-and-control-cables/expanded-ambient-temperatures/silicone-single-cores-50c-to-180c/oelflex-heat-180-sif.html

They are silicone insulated and dont melt if you touch them with your soldering iron. But they are not realy strong from a mechanical point of view. But I never had issues with them.

And these banana plugs from Wago are veeeery handy. My bench wires are all naked at least on one end. And as required I connect the Wago banana plugs on the wires. So, I dont have thousand wires with all sorts of connector variations. Only a hand full and I put them together as i need

https://eshop.wago.com/JPBC/singleview/articleList.hbc?articleID=13406043&hasMand_13406043=false&noOfPages=1&pageNo=1&from=Catalog&priceTypeID=1&currency=%E2%82%AC&FS=Catalog

[Christopher]

I tend to go for these:

http://uk.farnell.com/deltron/550-0700-01/plug-10a-4mm-cable-yellow/dp/1101104


With whatever on the other end. Normally just straight into 20/24awg cable with terminal blocks on the PCB under test.

At work we =have= to use shrouded 4mm jacks that are like £5 each...

[corrado33]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tons of banana plugs, so I actually don't need any termination. Just wires. I plan on making a few banana plug <--> mini grabber wires for signals, then a few banana <--> banana<--> alligator clip (the types that fit on banana jacks.)

[TimNJ]

I actually just finished making a set of banana to minigrabber leads a few hours ago. Silicone jackets are great but you might not even need them for short lengths. For like a foot or two, using regular old UL 1007 or UL 1015 wire might be good enough. For longer wires, less flexible wires like these might get annoying but for short lengths, they don't annoy me too much mainly because I don't move around these wires too much once I set them up. For multimeter or scope probes, silicone all the way because you need to be able to maneuver them.

[GreyWoolfe]

I use the silicon probe wire for almost everything-test leads and power leads.  I made banana to banana for connecting my breadboard to a power supply and banana to alligator/minigrabber for the multimeter.  i also used it to make cables for the o-scope by soldering short lengths onto BNC terminated coax cable and adding minigrabbers.  If I am going to play with ham radio gear and connect it to my variable 18VDC 35A power supply, I will use either the power cord that came with the equipment or the appropriate sized wire for the job.