Locating point of broken wire in cables.

[diydidi]

I was wondering if anyone has a clever solution for finding location of broken wires in multicored cables, headphone cables, and any other audio type cables.
I have tried various tools without much success. These include a homemade TDR, and AC mains sense pens.
I found this » CABLE TRACKER WITH TONE GENERATOR » Test & Measurements » Cable testers », whilst googling around.
Anyone ever try one of these?

[big_teee]

I'm a retired Comm tech phone office installer.
We used the Triplett brand fox and the hound tone generator.
It worked great.
Sometimes we would have cables running between floors with cut or broke leads.
You could pin point the break pretty close the best I remember.
If you know a phone installer he may have one on his truck he might let you try?
T

[diydidi]

Big Teee, sounds promising. Do you have a pic?

[Jazz P Bass]

I use one of these.

Not the best but it serves it's purpose.

Cable Distance Meter Cable Fault Finder VDV501 089 from Klein Tools | eBay

[big_teee]

Looks like they modernized it a bit.
Amazon.com: triplett fox and hound

The girl doesn't come with it!

[km6xz]

The Fox and Hound has been around for 60 years or more, that one looks like a cheap plastic version so ought to be cheap, but effective. What was the problem with TDR, they can be very accurate and even find multiple breaks. In multi-pair cables a simple capacitance bridge can be just as accurate. You do not need to measure the value, just compare the ratio of the suspect pair to a known good pair in the same cable. The ratio tells you the ratio of the distance to the break to the length of the good pair. TDRs are particularly good at finding shorts at some distance.

[Enzo]

And in general, breaks TEND to be at the ends, especially where the cable enters the connector. Mid-cable breaks are also often associated with damage to the jacket.

[diydidi]

Sucks living in Africa. No one ships here. Fml.

[Mick Bailey]

On auto wiring I use a binary chop method and a really fine sewing needle soldered onto a spare probe to penetrate the insulation.

[g1]

No one ships here. Fml.

I found this online and it cracked me up, so I thought I would share it :

"means Fix My Lighthouse. Back in the 17th Century, lighthouse keepers were tthe butt of everyone's jokes. When a lighthouse keeper was made fun of, his retort would be "why dont you fix my lighthouse!" which was shortened over time to FML. This term was made famous in the great battle of the Sole Bay in 1902 where 14 peolpe died and 1 person broke their glasses."

[J M Fahey]

I was wondering if anyone has a clever solution for finding location of broken wires in multicored cables, headphone cables, and any other audio type cables.

I often have to turn a guitar cable int 2 shorter interconnect ones for obvious reasons.

I use the capacitance meter built in my cheap multimeter to get the break point with quite good precision.

If I have a 10 meter cable , one end measures 220pF and the other 450 pF, the break is located at: 220/(220+450)*10= 3.28 meters from the lower capacitance end.

Try it, it works.

[diydidi]

JM will give it a try today.
The TDR I built works on coax. I tried with the 4 core cable in question, but I get varying Velocity factors for some reason. I tried to come up with the VF, by using 1m "good" cable.

[diydidi]

OK, I've tried all above mentioned methods. All work, but, I found if the cable has more than two conductors, the capacitance meter method is not accurate. This I presumed also effected the TDR I built.
I went out and bought the unit similar as advertised in my first post. IT WORKS!!
Gives and audible beep as you move the probe down the cable. The break point will give a "dead" spot where no audio is heard.
Hope this helps someone...