Thread: RF Shielding?

worth a shot i guess. id say ground that too... it wont be pretty though. how about just winding a ground wire around the cables as well? i think i saw something like this on a home amp power cable

Originally Posted by Caelric

Would some aluminum foil (or tinfoil) wrapped around a cable work as some ghetto RF shield? I have some cables that are picking up some signal from each other, and I was thinking that before I replace them with expensive shielded cable, I could wrap some type of cheap RF shield (i.e. aluminum foil) around them to see if that would solve the problem.

Dave

How long and how thick are the cables? What kind of cables are they, and what type of signals are they carrying?

Michael

They are the wires from the stock head unit that feed into my JL Audio Cleansweep. They are just plain thin 18 gauge stock wire from the stock head unit

Dave

Originally Posted by Caelric

They are the wires from the stock head unit that feed into my JL Audio Cleansweep. They are just plain thin 18 gauge stock wire from the stock head unit

Dave

Audio or power? How long?

Michael

Audio, about 18" long.

Originally Posted by Caelric

Audio, about 18" long.

I know, I keep asking questions, but here are some more.

Are they RCAs? If they are RCAs, they should be shielded already. I doubt MORE shileding would help. Also, they are normally shielded from each other, so shielding them together may not be soo good for them either.

If it is not an RCA, you can do the following. Buy some RF Coaxial cable. Buy 5 feet, though you will probably only need 2 or so feet. RG58 is fine. Carefully, VERY CAREFULLY, use a blade to cut the outer insulator along the length of the cable. Peel off the outer insulator. You will be left with the cables' shield, along with the inner conductor and it's harder plastic insulator. Now, similar to how you get out of a Chinese Finger Trap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap) from the each end of the cable, push the ends towards each other, so that the inner conductor and plastic insulator are free, and you can pull it out. Then, slip the now freed shield cable over the cable you want to shield. Also, you will want to ground the shield, with a wire soldered to it would be a good way to do it.

Michael

No, they are not RCA's, just regualr taps into the cars speaker wire.

Anwyays, I didn't even think of the shielding from an RF cable. That sounds like a plan, I'll be trying it out.

Dave