Boy, where to start! So much good stuff happening.
1st - thingstodo - It sounds not worth it; shipping costs can often spoil a "good deal." Thank you for considering it. :-)
2nd regarding wires - thank you, Paul & thingstodo for any suggestions on this. I've been looking into signal wire solutions and there sure seems to be a lot more to it than I originally thought.
I guess the first thing is what type of signal it is. My understanding of the gate driver signals is they are "single ended" - a 5V signal with a ground - right? So in this case, a shielded cable would be the best?
Another problem I'm working on uses differential pair signalling. In this case, I understand a twisted pair cable is the best solution, but I'm not sure how a shield or ground surface plays into it. Thingstodo - could you ask about differential pair signals? Any advice from the instrument supervisor would be invaluable.
So far, I found some info on it regarding PC board design:
http://www.pcbcarolina.com/images/pr...diff_pairs.pdf
But I'm still not sure whether a cable made of twisted pairs would be good enough in a noisy (EV) environment. If so, I found this fairly inexpensive wire that can use IDC connectors every 270mm:
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/1/ts0999-19101.pdf
-E*clipse