Wire processing kit targets railway sector

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 26, 2008

The new Nova range of wire processing equipment has been designed especially for the manufacture of wire harnesses for the locomotive and rolling stock industry.

Wire processing specialist Spectrum Technologies is set to make a major move into the locomotive and rolling stock (LRS) sector.

Using the InnoTrans 2008 show in Berlin as a platform the company will be introducing its new Nova range of wire processing equipment designed especially for the manufacture of wire harnesses for the locomotive and rolling stock industry.

Nova is a modular range of wire processing products based on Spectrum's successful new Nova platform recently introduced to the aerospace industry.

Nova wire processing systems incorporate ink jet or laser technology, as required, for direct wire marking and identification in place of expensive heat shrink sleeve marking systems.

These marking technologies are embodied in a range of wire mark, measure and cut systems that are available configured either with single dereelers for manual wire loading or multistation dereelers with automated wire loading systems.

The automated systems enable up to 32 different wire and cable reels to be held on a multistation dereeler, which is coupled to a high speed wire auto select and load system for rapid wire changes on the Nova wire marker (typically 6s).

Using these systems under computer control manufacturing data can be downloaded to the Nova controller so that wire harnesses can be processed automatically with wires generated in order by connector group and collected by various downstream wire handling system options.

After pioneering this technology within the aerospace industry, Spectrum has identified the LRS sector as being well suited to benefit from the use of direct wire identification and modern lean manufacturing techniques in the production of wiring harnesses for locomotives and rolling stock.

Research has shown that LRS harnesses are very similar to those used in the aerospace sector: complex, physically large and made up of high performance, specialist wiring.

LRS sector harness requirements are developing in a similar manner to aerospace around 20 years ago with increased complexity, system integration, weight and size concerns leading to issues with wire identification methods, mark durability, lifetime costs and system upgrade and environmental issues etc.

As a result wire processing technologies presently used in the LRS sector are increasingly unable to deliver the required quality or offer the needed cost reductions to cope with current and future demands.

With this in mind Spectrum has developed NovaJet.

NovaJet offers black and/or white ink marking with UV cure for enhanced permanence; systems are available in manual or automated configurations.

Direct marking onto the wire offers many cost reducing and quality benefits compared with sleeving such as the significant reduction of consumable material and associated labour costs; enhanced flexible marking (bar coding, connector/pin information, traceability); reduction of bulk at wire ends and consequently the overall weight of the harness; improved legibility and permanence of the identification codes.

NovaJet systems are also fully upgradeable in the field from manual to automated configurations.