Yes, you are safe.  Cat 5 and other twisted types (twisted pair, not
mentally) are reasonably good at keeping signals to themselves.  Think of
phone lines on the pole.  The one thing that you wouldn't want to do is
run them on or near higher voltage lines, such as 120VAC.  In process
control, it is usually best to keep low voltage (comms, 24VDC, 4-20mA)
away from other higher voltage lines.  On occasion the mix can cause odd
signal behavior.  I saw a coal mine one time with our computer comms line
(similar to RS485 with a kick) run down the same conduit as the 90KHz AM
radio comms feeder line.  The miners could not figure out why
communications 'dropped out' every now and then.  They though that I had a
keen observation when I noticed that every time the guy keyed the mike,
the comms dropped.  Unkey it, and it came back.  By the way, if I put the
scope on the line differentially, you could barely discern square waves
out of the muck, and yet the computers managed to get just enough good
messages through to stay in comms.  After re-running the lines on
different poles to the mine and through it in different ways, you could
eat lunch off of the scope waveform.  Moral of the story is to keep like
types together and keep radiators and high voltages seperate.

Chris Eddy, PE
Pioneer Microsystems, Inc.

john pearson wrote:

> Thank you for reading
>
> Is it ok to run 15 to 20 cat5 network cables through about 6' of metal
> conduit (1-1/4" emt). I hope this is enough info.
>
> Thank you
> John



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