Shielded and EMC cable protected for defence/aerospace and space applications

Cliff Electronics has extended its range of industry-standard VHDCI 'Centronics' style cables to fulfil the necessities for interconnecting connecting instrumentation in industries such as defence, aerospace and space.

A new 0.5m length has been added to the existing range of 1m and 2m versions. Commonly known as a 'Centronics' type data cable, all are terminated with standard D-shaped connectors.

VHDCI cables are used in high-performance data transfer applications supporting the latest SCSI-style interfaces and for connecting peripherals such as portable disc drives, RAID data storage, HIL applications, tape backup drives, CD-ROM players, and printers to computers. Although USB cables are now more commonplace, parallel cables are still needed for many uses, including connecting to legacy devices.

The VHDCI cable connector is very small and allows the placement of four wide SCSI connectors on the back of a single PCI card slot. It uses the regular 68-contact pin assignment with the cable's male connector (plug) and the female connector ('receptacle') on the equipment panel.

Other key specifications include an operating current 0.5A maximum per contact, with an operating voltage maximum 30VAC (RMS)/DC.

Enhanced EMC Shield. EMI protection, ferrite core: Ø17.5mm x 28.5mm x Ø12mm.

John Hall, managing director of Cliff Electronics, says, "Our new 0.5m length VHDCI cable meets the need for connecting equipment mounted in racks or other close proximity systems where it effectively becomes a patch cable. It will be welcomed by system integrators who need to keep interconnect cabling to a minimum."

The company is the market leader in the design and manufacture of standard and Feed-Through connectors for audio, broadcast, and industrial systems, including Fibre-Optic.