Faraday cage

[sleepwalker]

how useful would one be as far as suppressing RFI and what should you build it out of?

 

[Beetle]

Build it out of conductive material (metal). How it will work in any specific situation is hard to tell. Why not build it and try it out, and keep us up to date on the results.

 

[C2]

but that would be impossible?

 

[Beetle]

It would?

 

[C2]

Mu metal...

 

[Beetle]

...go on...

 

[sleepwalker]

I had read you could make it out of chicken wire?

I have some brass mesh

I made a frame already I am going to put it around the engine of my big truck

call me crazy but I have tried everything else

 

[Beetle]

The cage will, theoretically, "trap" RF with a wavelength greater than the openings; the lower the frequency, the better the isolation. Chicken wire might not work too well (it has some significant-sized openings) - a finer mesh would be an improvement.

You'll never know if it'll work unless you try it.

 

[C2]

The openings in chicken wire are about 0.02 meters...so that would trap a wavelength up to about 15 GHz?

The problem is going to be that you have electrical wires running throughout your truck, which will carry and probably radiate the noise outside of your cage...

 

[Beetle]

All too true. The original question didn't mention anything about his truck, just about a Faraday cage. They do work, and have worked all along (the physics doesn't change). However, as you say, the cage will only trap stuff within it; wires extending through the cage would have to be individually filtered.

 

[Cheech]

They made one of those on myth busters did they not? Adam walked in it and lost signal on his cell phone. Good show!

 

[DTB Radio]

Gee, and I thought a Faraday cage was what they kept Faraday in....


Jokes aside, a Faraday cage will definitely work to isolate an area from either receiving or radiating RF up to a certain wavelength, which depends on the size of the openings in the material chosen for the cage walls. Chicken wire would make an excellent cage for anything from HF up through VHF and UHF and well into the microwave range. As was already mentioned, the smaller the openins the better. Thats why a microwave oven door has those small holes in the shield. Its to let you be mesmerized by your gourmet melted-cheese sandwich as it slowly rotates, without toasting your eyeballs in the process

 

[Beetle]

That's what they keep him in, but they can only keep him there faraday at a time.

 

[SKINNYDIPPER]

OLD TIME BUDDY

BEETLE -- I AM HAPPY TO SEE YOU HERE ON THE FORUM... GLAD YOU BROUGHT YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR ALSO.. THE SAME FOR DTB ALSO..

 

[Beetle]

Yo, Skinny! Howzit goin? By the way, when you put up that GAP Titan, follow the instructions EXACTLY, especially where they tell you to route the yellow coax out the little hole near the bottom...believe them! They designed it; not me (voice of experience speaking here)!

I had all SORTS of problems with mine until I went back and rerouted that stinkin' coax.

Night and day, man. Night and day.