DC Plugs for my test bench

A few months back I made a desktop PSU for my work bench and I thought the Madbean Road Rage charge pump would be perfect since I was able to get +9v -9V 12v & 18V all in one box. I needed to make some DC jacks for the PSU and decided to spruce it up a bit with some easy to find parts. This is the items I needed for this project,

• DC Power Plug 2.1mm – I grabbed these since they were cheap and did the job.
• 18 Gauge Speaker wire – I’m not sure where I bought this since it was a stash I had in my garage.
• Black Paracord – I love this stuff but it can be a pain to work with. I suggest taking your time and making sure you use something very sharp to cut it. Also, make sure it does not fray to much, I use a lighter to melt the end a bit.

 

 

 

 

I cut the wire and paracord to the same length. You might need to cut the paracord a bit longer due to the diameter of the cable may shorten the overall length of the paracord.

 

Remove the white nylon strings from with in the paracord. They just pull right out with no effort.

 

I found it 4000 times easier to put the DC jack plastic covers on the paracord before feeding the wire through. Experiment and rinse and repeat.

 

Now for the slow part of this process, feeding the wire into the paracord. Think of the paracord like a “chinese finger trap” and you need to push the paracord together to expand it. I know.. I Know “what the hell is her talking about”, trust me, you will figure it out.

 

All done, that wasn’t to bad, right?

 

I trim the ground wire back a bit (In this case I used the wire with this white stripe on it) so I can solder it to the sleeve of the DC jack.

 

Shazam, all soldered up. wow this picture makes it look like a pretty bad job but since the ground wire was trimmed there is a very low possibility for a short.

 

Here it is all put together. I think the paracord just makes it look so clean.