Are there any standard cables and/or connectors for RS485 runs? Our application is inside an electrically noisy commercial espresso machine (up to 50A of total current into the machine, lots of noisy inductive loads switching on and off, etc.) In addition to electrical factors, the area will be warm (130-160F) and may also have very high humidity sometimes.

I know that we need shielded twisted pair cabling, but don't know much beyond that. We'd like to use some sort of multi-pin connector (not just wires into screw terminals, pin headers, etc.) to make the system service friendly and less prone to mis-wiring. It seems like regular ethernet cable and connectors would be an obvious option for basic electrical capabilities, but I'm not so sure about it in hot, humid conditions.

Any recommendations?

 

The cable I use in an industrial environment for this standard used by 5v encoders is excellent, although may be a little pricey and overkill for what you need.
Belden 9891, It has individualy shielded pairs and an OA braid shield, the other nice feature is the power pair is one gauge higher.
Max.

 

The cable I use in an industrial environment for this standard used by 5v encoders is excellent, although may be a little pricey and overkill for what you need.
Belden 9891, It has individualy shielded pairs and an OA braid shield, the other nice feature is the power pair is one gauge higher.
Max.

That looks very nice, but I certainly hope we don't need anything that extreme! That is impressively expensive.

Right now we use 10 pin, unshielded, flat ribbon cable with 2x5 idc header plugs, and it works most of the time. We definitely need an upgrade, but we're hoping it can be a more incremental step.

 

Cat 5 STP would be a vast upgrade over flat ribbon cable, with an insignificant cost. And you would not need to change you PCB is you use 2x5 crimp on connectors.