General Process
Wire harnesses are assemblies that consist of mostly purchased components with minimal processing required. These components can include:
• Wires, which are purchased in bulk lengths and cut and stripped as needed on a component by component basis (wire by wire basis). These can include -- but are not limited to -- the examples shown below:
• Dressing materials and labels, such as tape, bundling materials, insulation, etc., which are purchased and processed in a similar fashion. Examples of dressing materials can include:
• Connectors, pins, terminals, seals, and everything that goes on the ends of a wire harness. These components are typically purchased as-is and just assembled. A few connector examples include:
For a wire harness with normal complexity, aPriori costs the following steps:
1 Preparation of the wires and cables. This step includes cutting the wires or cables to length. Also, some additional operations may be carried out such as marking, sealing, molding, sleeving, or labeling of the wires or connectors.
2 Assembly of the harness on a board or jig. This includes manually laying-in the wires and cables, inserting the wire ends into connectors if necessary, tying, or taping the bundles or wires and/or sleeving the bundles. Testing is usually done at this stage and some labeling may also be carried out.
Note: aPriori does not currently cost installation of the interconnections or the cable harness into the chassis or product.
Component Types
aPriori recognizes the following wire harness component types and subtypes:
Description | Type | Subtype | Sub-Subtype |
Wire | W | W1 -- Single Conductor Stranded Insulated Wire W2 -- Single Conductor Solid Insulated Wire W3 -- Multi-Conductor Cable W4 -- Coax Cable W5 -- Triax Cable W6 -- Ribbon Cable W7 -- Solid Buss | |
Terminations | T | T1 -- Contacts T2 -- Ring/Fork/Blade Terminals T3 -- Tinned Wires T4 -- Shield Terminators T5 -- Wire Ferrules | T1A Crimped T1B Soldered T2A Crimped T2AA Machine Crimped T2AM Manually Crimped T2B Soldered T4A Crimped T4B Soldered T5A Machine Crimped T5M Manually Crimped |
Connectors | C | C1 -- Unloaded Connectors (default) C2 -- Loaded Connectors C3 -- Ribbon Cable Connectors C4 -- Coax Connectors C5 -- Triax Connectors C6 -- Wedge Locks C7 -- Backshells C8 -- Strain Reliefs C9 -- Dust Caps C10 -- Shrink Boots | |
Splices | P | P1 -- Ultrasonic Welds P2 -- Butt Splices P3 -- Insulation Displacement Splices | |
Dressing | D | D1 -- Cable Ties D2 -- Seal Tape D3 -- Braid D4 -- Heat Shrink Tubing D5 -- Single Braided Sleeving D6 -- Double Braided Sleeving D7 -- Expando Braided Sleeving D8 -- Split Loom Tubing D9 -- Plain Flexible Conduit D10 -- Liquid Tight Conduit D11 -- Spiral Wrap D12 -- EMI Braiding | |
Labels | L | L1 -- Heat Shrink Labels L2 -- Wrap-Around Labels | |
Seals | S | S1 -- Plugs S2 -- Wire Seals | |
Bundles | B | ||
Twists | TW |