High Flexibility and High Flex Cycle Flat Cables

All offer extreme flexibility, and most are built for continuous flex motion, nominally rated for 10,000,000 flex cycles.
Small bend radii for compact motion assemblies and tight routing.
Flat profile bends with no loss of electrical integrity.

Flex Cable vs Flexible Cable?

Flex cables differ from flexible cables in their ability to provide continuous flexing over a very high number of cycles without failure. Cicoil cables suit both High Flex and Flexible cable requirements. Flexible cable cycle life is measured in the thousands; Flex cable pushes into the millions. Unless otherwise specified Cicoil cables provide a nominal cycle life of 10,000,000. Cicoil flat cable has inherent design attributes that make them the ultimate choice for flex in motion control, robotics, semi-conductor manufacturing, and other critical automation applications.

Ultra-Flex Wire is at the Core

Every Cicoil cable incorporates finely stranded, ultra-flexible wire conductors. Standard 24 AWG wire has 7 base strands, ‘flexible’ wire has 19 base strands, while Cicoil High-Flex wire has 66 base strands. All Cicoil wire has base strands no larger than 40 AWG maximum, versus the 36 AWG and larger found in other ‘flexible’ wires.

Inherently Small Bend Radius

Cable jacketing material also greatly impacts the cable flexibility. The picture above shows two flat cables at rest. The cable using a PTFE jacket (foreground) has a natural bend radius twice as large as the Cicoil cable (rear) that features our proprietary Flexx-Sil™ jacketing. Tighter bends mean more compact automation without reducing cable reliablility and life.