Ribbon Cable

Ribbon cable

Ribbon cable is often called multi-wire planar cable. This cable can have many conducting wires running parallel to each other on the same flat plane. This means that the cable is wide and flat and resembles a piece of ribbon!

These cables are widely used in computers, for connecting up hard drives and CD drives. In the maker and hobby electronics arena, these are widely used to create neat, tidy, and colourful wiring looms for all kinds of projects. They’re also a great way to layout a project for diagnostics and ease of assembly.

Their wires are normally either in a rainbow configuration (our favourite) or predominantly grey with one red wire to denote pin 1. We also recommend using a keyed IDC connector to ensure you don’t connect your signals incorrectly.