On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:27:44 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

"kony" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:46:50 GMT, Don
wrote:

I have a ribbon cable and want to solder a single wire to all the
conductors.

This is a flatter ribbon cable than the sort of cable found in PCs for
for IDE drives. ISTR it may have come from a printer where it was
subject to a lot of movement.

I don't have any ancy equipment. Is it possible to solder onto the metal
in the conductors? Or is that metal made of aluminum or something like
it which is difficult to solder?


The safe answer is hunt down a compatible connector to mate
with it. Someplace like Digikey, Mouser, Newark, Allied
Electronics might have them.

It's called an IDC -- insulation displacement connector.

However, I suspect the OP wants to "short together" all the conductors. At
least, that's what his post suggests. (See above.)



I'm not so sure it would be an insulation displacement
connector in this case, from the description of it being
flatter and that when a cable is subject to a lot of
movement it's best to avoid insulation displacement type
connectors since they usually either pince or stab the
middle of the conductor which can weaken it more when it
flexes a lot.

Some of these cables have individual wires sticking out the
end of the insulation and the connector is molded with
several small holes and a strip that presses down onto it
after the wire is inserted, creating a wedged sort of
friction fit. Other types have a flat metal conductor a bit
like you'd see on a laptop keyboard, though overall the
connector isn't so different except it has a slot for the
entire thing to slide into and one side of the cable has the
contacts exposed, flat contacts.