600+ CAT6A shielded cables (F/UTP) dangling out of the drop ceiling in a hospital, all nicely bundled in groups of 24, and ready to be laced in to the patch panels but several bundles have duplicate numbering.... This stuff is difficult to tone out.
If I'm at the station end with my unknown cable and I strip back all conductors and twist them up to make a larger conductor, place the red alligator clip to the conductors, and the black alligator clip to a ground at the station end (metal framing, electrical box, ground prong etc.), what happens in the MDF is I get terrible bleed on every cable. If I take the black alligator clip off of ground, and say split up the conductors 1/2 on red and 1/2 I cannot find the cable. Done this way, the only way my probe can pick up the tone is by getting it within 1" from the cut end of the cable.
I've experimented with red on the copper and black on the foil shield that wraps the conductors, red on the foil and black on ground, etc etc.
Only two results: no tone, or too much tone bleeding all over every single darn cable in the room.
What's the trick to toning shielded cables?
Thanks!
