Sparky stuff

[Pudsey Bear]

How To Find Where A Wire In A Cable Is Broken

Determining that a cable has a broken conductor is the easy part, but where exactly is the break? In a recent video, [Richard] over at the Learn Electronics Repair channel on YouTube gave two commu…

hackaday.com

 

[merl]

That's a neat idea but you'll need capacitance meter that's capable of measuring tens of Pico Farads, most hobby meters don't go that low and many don't measure capacitance at all. When in the Pico Farads range you have to plug the capacitor directly into the measuring device too, you can't use the long meter leads because the leads themselves add an unknown and unpredictable capacitance and mess up the result.
Typically a break occurs at or near a connector and a bit of wiggling is all that's needed to locate the culprit but it's something I'd not thought about before and will bear in mind for the future just in case, nice, thanks Kev
Another method of finding a break is to check continuity with a megger meter, gradually increase the test voltage and eventually the pulse voltage will 'jump' the gap and you only have to listen to where the ticking is coming from.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Way above my pay grade Merlin but I more or less got it, basically (for me) you are measuring the broken length of the two parts of a wire, like you could if it was visible with a tape measure, but wiv clever electrickery.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

 

[gasgas]

. . . .or you could use a Time Domain Reflectometer. £1,000 to £5600.
. . . .or you could just buy a new cable

In my days of proper employment we used an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer to find the length, or any breaks or cracks in optical fibre. If Ivan Putin finds your fibre, bends it in a sharp bend and cuts a tiny slit in it, he can read your data. But your recieved signal strength at the far end will be noticeably lower which might sound an alarm.
Or you could be Sargent Electrics doing wiring for a UK motorhome manufacturer. In which case most of your copper wires will be faulty when you have butchered them on installation. To compound the felony you would be stuffing two mains-voltage conductors into a pin connector designed to take one conductor.