My bust, I thought you were meaning a data snake to the truss. If it's just four circuits, it is probably most cheap just to tape/loom together individual cables into a snake. Five to ten layers of electrical tape, five layers of gaffers tape per about three to four feet of run should be fine. Hook one end up to a fixed position and have someone pull from a few feet away from where you are taping to get all cables the same length within the loom. Don't pull with vehicles unless you also want that vehicle to break conductors inside the loom.
Simple and done. Next best is to go with a Socopex cable assembly and what's called a fan out or breakout box as an alternative. Both will have a male plug at the truss end or a female Socopex plug at the dimmer end than either have individual cords to power up the circuits, or outlets to power them up. This is necessary because you really are not allowed to just strip wire and have exposed conductors going into individual plugs or circuits without a vulconized breakout from the cable and sufficient protection over individual circuits as per the overall jacket of the cable assembly. Fairly obvious safety reasons.
This applies to the male plug end of this Soco like cable also. Termination of either end in any thing other than a multiple pin plug is at best marginal in compliance with NEC standards for electrical boxes mounted on cords. In other words, and at least in my opinion you cannot install 1900 wall boxes on the ends of the multi-conductor cables than even attach the ends to individual cords. Not designed for this purpose and given 24 conductors as per my memory of box fill capicity even 12 conductors going to outlets or feeding thru is still too much. A Soco cable would be against code to be spliced in such a box even if it's able to. People do do this however, this is my interpitation. The better way is to terminate multiple conductor cable in a multiple pin plug than attaching that to a box with capacity and space do a proper job of it and is removable so you don't have some heavy unwieldy box at the end of your cable when running it to the truss. Such a thing would break down conductors.
Granted you were only planning four circuits and could make do with even a 16/10 conductor cable of SO grade if you bridged some grounds as would be necessary in any metallic enclosure. It's usually cheaper overall to just go with a 14/14 conductor cable such as Coast, Duraflex, Oleflex or Proplex with Soco type 19 pin plugs on it and have the grounds tied into one. Fan out from there. Gives you room for growth or spares, and it being a standard size is frequently cheaper and pre-built in stock lengths. Same with fan-outs or fan-ins into and out of the multi-cable or various truss mounted boxes you can pre-rig to the truss than just screw the cable into.
Hope it helps, sorry I thought you were talking about data lines to the truss.
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Topic: Power snake for small truss. (Read 3937 times)