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Cable weight and copper content
What a kilometre of a given construction actually weighs, how much of that is copper, what the copper is worth at today's price, and how far a 40HQ gets you. Build the construction from its parts — nothing here assumes a specification you did not enter.
Quoting against a copper basis? Tell us the construction and the length — we quote copper at the LME rate on the day of the order and show the split between metal and conversion.
How the numbers are built
Each conductor is a circle of the AWG diameter; the insulation is the annulus between that circle and the core OD; the jacket is the annulus between the cable OD and the same OD less twice the wall. Multiply a cross-section in mm² by the material density in g/cm³ and you get kilograms per kilometre directly — 1 mm² of copper is 8.96 kg/km.
Two things move the total far more than the rest: the conductor gauge and the number of conductors. Going from 24 AWG to 23 AWG is 26% more copper on the same build, which is most of why CAT6 costs more than CAT5E at identical length.
- Copper is about half the weight of a finished LAN cable — the rest is insulation, jacket and fillers.
- CCA is not “the same cable cheaper”. 40% of the weight and 1.6× the resistance; it fails long PoE runs.
- Weight limits containers before volume on copper cable: a 40HQ holds about 26.5 t, which is roughly 660 km of CAT6.
- The copper price is not the cable price. Ask for the copper basis and what happens if LME moves before shipment.