INFORMATION SHEET

CREATING A PATCH PANEL CABLE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

After reading of this Information Sheet, you should be able to:

1. CREATING A PATCH PANEL

How to Punch Down a Cat Cable into a Patch Panel

Punching-down a cat cable into a patch panel may seem like tricky business,
but once you’ve got the basics down it becomes as easy as the proverbial pie.
This high-level guide is here to help.

What You'll Need

1. CAT Cables (Ethernet Cable)
2. Patch Panels
3. Punch Down Tool
4. Cable Strippers
5. Screw Driver
Step 1: Prepare the Cat Cable

To start off with you will want to begin with preparing the cat cables you intend
to punch into the patch panels. You with do so by removing the outer jacket with
the cable stripper. If you do not have a cable stripper handy it can also be done
with a sharp knife, but please be careful as this method result in both injury to
yourself and damage to the inner copper cables.
Ideally you should remove approximately 1 inch (25mm) of the outer jacket, this
ensures a nice clean fit into the patch panel without the risk of exposing too
much cable and damaging it. Once the outer jacket has been removed you will
notice 4 pairs of copper cables, making up a total of 8 cables. In order to
successfully punch down the cables into the patch panel you will need to gently
untwist the pairs so that the 8 cables can be individually worked work with.
Step 2: Prepare the Patch Panel

In most cases full patch panels are made up various parts. That being said, it
can prove very useful in most situations to break apart the patch panel into it’s
small components. This allows for you to work with only the required parts of
the panel and makes the entire project simpler to handle on the whole.
Take the screwdriver and begin by unscrewing the section of the panel you are
going to work with and place the remainder to the side. While doing so take note
of the label on the inside of the panel with the color code printed on to it. This
will be explained in the next step

Step 3: Put Cat Cable into Patch Panel

In order to correctly insert the Cat cable wires into the patch panel you will need
to take a close look at the color code that is printed on the label adhered to the
panel.Let’s take a closer look.
First off you will notice that there are in fact 2 pin-out types, these are typically
labelled A and B respectively. Generally most installations would use pin-out B,
but please be sure to check which one is right for your specific application.
Once you have selected a pin-out type you will see that each one has it’s own
color code, with 4 solid colors and 4 stripes. Simply match the solid colored wires
to the solid color slots and do the same with the stripes. Inserting the wires into
the slots requires nothing more than gently pushing them in. Once all the wires
have been correctly inserted it is time to being with the actual punching down.

Step 4: Punching Down

First off you will notice that there are in fact 2 pin-out types, these are typically
labelled A and B respectively. Generally most installations would use pin-out B,
but please be sure to check which one is right for your specific application.
Once you have selected a pin-out type you will see that each one has it’s own
color code, with 4 solid colors and 4 stripes. Simply match the solid colored wires
to the solid color slots and do the same with the stripes. Inserting the wires into
the slots requires nothing more than gently pushing them in. Once all the wires
have been correctly inserted it is time to being with the actual punching down.
Patch Panel
In order to correctly
punch down the wires
into the patch panel you
will need to make use of
a Punch Down Tool. The
tool itself is fairly simple
in that it has a pointed
side and a flat size. The
pointed side is the side
that will trim the ends of
the wires to leave a clean
cut.
Begin by positioning the
tool over the wire you
intend to punch down and then using as much force as required push down on
the handle of the tool. This will both push the wire firmly into place and trim the
ends at the same time., continue doing this for all the remaining wires. You may
also notice that occasionally some of the wire ends remain, you can usually fix
this by gently removing them by hand as the tool may not have cleaved all the
way through the wires on the initial punch down.