Clear Lake & Webster · Harris County / Greater Houston
We buy instrumentation and power cable in Clear Lake.
Clear Lake runs on measurement. Test stands, laboratories and building refits here produce shielded pairs, control cable, and the power cable that keeps them running.
An instrumentation lot does not look like a construction lot. It arrives in cardboard rather than on a wooden reel: 16 and 18 AWG pairs, triads, individual and overall shields, a few hundred feet at a time, often with the maker's label still inside the box. The cable is small, and most of what it is worth sits in the construction rather than in the copper.
Around Johnson Space Center that material accumulates in engineering buildings, calibration rooms and test facilities, and it leaves when a rig is decommissioned or a floor is refitted. Power cable goes with it: 480 V feeders to a test stand, branch circuits to a new bench, and the tray cable that ties a control panel to everything it operates.
Instrumentation cable is not power cable
A signal cable is built to keep a small voltage clean. Conductors are stranded and fine, usually 16 to 22 AWG, insulated in PVC or a fluoropolymer, with the pairs twisted at a set lay. A foil or braid shield wraps the pair, the triad or the whole bundle, and a bare drain wire runs alongside it to be grounded at one end.
That construction is what a buyer reads. A 16 AWG pair with an overall foil shield and a drain is a different item from the same pair with individual shields and no overall coverage, even though both boxes say instrumentation. The jacket print and the box label are the only reliable way to separate them.
Voltage rating matters too. Most of this cable is rated 300 V and belongs in a tray or a raceway kept away from power conductors. Cable rated 600 V exists and is bought as well, but it is a smaller part of the market and it is identified by the print rather than by the box.
Test stands, laboratories and building refits
A test stand tends to be rebuilt rather than repaired. When a rig is modified, the harness and the tray between the control room and the stand are usually replaced as a package, and the cable that comes off is pulled, tagged and coiled. Some of it was cut for that installation; some is the balance of a spool bought for the job.
Laboratory refits are gentler. A bench layout changes, a hood moves, and a run of shielded pair comes out with its connectors still fitted. Building work adds the power side: a panel replacement in a hospitality property, a feeder for a new chiller, tray cable in a mechanical room that was reconfigured over a weekend.
Medical and hospitality buildings contribute their own share. Equipment swaps leave dedicated circuits behind, and renovations leave MC and conduit wire in short lengths, along with the receptacle whips that nobody bothers to keep. A corridor refit in a hospital or a hotel can produce a pallet of that material in a fortnight.
- 16 and 18 AWG pairs, triads and multipairs
- Overall foil, individual foil or braid shields
- Control cable, 14 to 10 AWG, shielded and not
- 600 V tray cable from panel and rig work
- MC, AC and conduit wire from refits
- 480 V feeder and motor leads from test stands
Keep the control material and the power material in separate boxes. They are reviewed on different grounds, and a mixed carton slows the whole lot down.
What the shield and drain wire tell you
A drain wire is a bare conductor in contact with the foil, and its whole purpose is to carry interference to ground. If it is corroded, broken or missing, the cable has lost part of what it was made for. That failure is electrical rather than visible, which is why a signal lot is read more carefully than a power lot.
Shields also record handling. A foil that is creased and split, a braid pulled loose from its overlap, a jacket crushed flat by a cable tie: each one says the cable was installed and stripped out rather than returned unused. Say which it was, because used signal cable is graded as used.
The cut itself is the last check. Clean, square cuts with the foil intact suggest a careful removal. Frayed ends with the shield peeled back suggest a demolition, and that material is judged on the copper and the condition of the jacket rather than on the shield it once had.
Describing a control lot so it can be reviewed
Write the list by part number where a box still has one. Failing that, give the pair count, the AWG, the shield arrangement and the footage, and photograph the jacket print. Instrumentation is the one category where a maker's part number does more work than any description you could write.
Boxes are fine. Cable does not have to be on a reel to be reviewed, and a carton of 500 foot coils is easier to handle than a wooden drum. Leave the boxes closed until collection if the cable is clean and dry, since opening them adds nothing to the answer.
- Part number or jacket print, photographed
- Pair and triad count, AWG, shield type
- Footage, or the number of boxes
- Whether the cable was installed and pulled
- Where it is stored, indoors or outside
Related review paths
Questions sellers ask
Do you buy instrumentation cable in short lengths?
Yes. Signal cable often arrives in 250 and 500 foot coils, and a single box is a normal lot. Short remainders under a hundred feet usually travel with a bigger load, but they still count toward the review.
Is control cable with a damaged drain wire bought?
Yes, at a lower grade. A broken or corroded drain limits what the cable can be used for, and a buyer will treat it as general control wire rather than shielded signal cable. The conductor and jacket still carry value.
What about the power cable that came off a test rig?
That is bought on the same visit. Test stand feeders, motor leads and the tray cable that ties a panel to a rig are reviewed on size, voltage class and jacket condition, exactly as they would be from any other industrial job in the city.
Can you take a mixed pallet of control and building wire?
Yes, and mixed pallets are common when a floor is cleared. Group the material by type and photograph each pile. Sorting happens during the review, so nothing needs to be separated before the lot is offered.
Buying desk · Greater Houston
Selling cable in Clear Lake & Webster?
Tell us what is on the reel, where it sits and what condition it is in. A buyer reviews the lot, asks for photographs of the tag and the cut end, and comes back with a real answer — not a request to call a call centre.
- Cable type, size and voltage class
- Footage, reel count or weight, and condition
- City, and whether the site has loading equipment