What are the best value/price wires/cables to connect sensors

May be this is not the best place to ask but I know no other place to ask. What brand do you use? What is the brand with the best quality/price ratio?

Harting or Phoenix Contact from Mouser.
Automation Direct is the best price.

As I know automation direct sells southwire.

Automation Direct's sensor cordsets are from Murr. The quality is excellent--as far as I can tell they are the same products we would receive from our local Murr distributor, but the price is significantly lower. Frankly I'm surprised that Murr would allow their distributors to be undercut that much.

I buy directly from Murr and they will match the price on AD.com

I'm into this conversation a little late, but has anyone used Turck cordsets that now use Murr, or vice versa? I have been using Turck, and like the product, but recently quote Murr to be less than half the price! I want to switch, but trying to look for outside opinions.

I've never looked into it myself, but we had a sales rep for ESCHA cordsets claiming that they had previously been the manufacturer of Turck's cordsets and are now doing their own thing with a similar range/less price.

We are using IFM, but we also get a discount for the numbers we buy.

Turck and IFM are our best value/quality balance because we get decent discounts via our new parent company. Turck suffers from a terrible website and spotty availability for popular products in North America, but the quality is generally very good.

My experience with Automation Direct has been poor; we had cables that leaked, shorted, and did not pass necessary standards tests.

We use IFM cordsets and Murr splitters. The IFM cordsets work well for us and we get great pricing. The IFM M12 splitters have been a issue here,ie: poor fit and too big the fit on some M12 blocks we use. The Murr splitters are good quantity and are small enough to fit on the smallest pitch M12 blocks.

Thank you everyone for your input on this matter. i was looking for manufacturer do become official distributor in my country.

Ken Roach said:

Turck suffers from a terrible website

Click to expand...

Agreed, they ruined it awhile back. Fortunately they still let us use the old site:
http://old.turck.us

I find the pictorial drill-down product selector to be quite handy.

I know this is a little on the old side but I have been working/thinking on this since I saw the thread and now I need a little more details if possible, I dont have the funds to just buy everything so im trying to narrow down the search and the products, I plan on starting with cables first, so... 3, 4, 5, 6 or 8 pin, male or female what lengths do you normally use and would you buy your cables from one supplier and sensors from another? just not sure if I can bite off both (cables and sensors) at one time

Thanks for your feedback

I still recommend Automation Direct (Murr) for sensor cables. For M12 cables, we generally only buy the 5-wire versions. They're compatible with 4-pin sensors and only cost a few bucks more. Less to keep on the shelf. 3-pin M12 is an oddball so don't bother with it unless you know you have devices that need it. For M8 cables, we stock both 3-wire and 4-wire versions (they are not compatible) although most of the sensors we use require the 3-pin. Anything with more than 5 pins is specialty (light curtain, safety switch, encoder, etc.) so we usually just stock these on an as-needed basis. We typically buy long and short lengths (10m and 2m) of each type.

We're getting in the habit of using sensor junction blocks for on-machine I/O, so we've also been stocking double ended cables in M8 and M12 styles. Murr/AD has pretty good pricing on these also.

I've been using Automation Direct prox sensors for awhile now, they work pretty well in light duty applications. We stock shielded and unshielded versions in both M8 and M12 sizes. For heavy duty or abusive environments I usually spring for a Turck but they cost about 2-3x more.

EDIT: I'd also recommend having some M8 and M12 field wireable connectors on hand (both male and female). These are handy for repairs or if you need to make up a special cable.

Do yourself a favor and check out Lumberg. They have really high quality cables and cord sets and in Multitude of configurations. I've been using them for 12 years+ and never had a single quality issue. Their documentation is excellent and we can get their stuff overnight almost always from national suppliers. They also offer different wire jacket configurations for differing environments and again the documentation to backup your selection needs. Not a salesmen for them at all but they've saved my butt a bunch in a pinch. (no pun intended)!