Custom Wire Harness for Marine Industry

By choosing us as their outsourcing partner, Electro-Prep, Inc. helped a marine industry manufacturer overcome issues with product assembly and improve the production timeline for unmanned underwater search vehicles. Before our involvement, they experienced problems with the wiring because elements were built separately. We developed a solution for combining and binding the wires into a single harness that streamlined the vehicles wiring process, while still providing full compliance with industry standards for performance and safety in an undersea environment.Addressing all issues with manufacturability, component, and material specifications, we designed and fabricated the subsea qualified wire harness from the ground up using forming boards. Intended to ensure the highest degree of repeatability and reproducibility in the final product, the forming boards list all of the wire runs and give our certified technicians a full-scale layout of the wire paths, bends, and terminations. Although wire harness assembly can be labor-intensive, we employed both semi-automatic and hand crimping tools to expedite the process. We also engineered and built custom fixtures to perform 100% continuity testing on each assembly.This wire harness consisted of discrete and multi-conductive wires with circular and rectangular contacts and spliced and soldered terminations. For the initial batches, we bundled the wires using a spiral wrap, but switched to military wire lacing, which is easier for the company’s assemblers to work with when installing the harness in tight places. We continue to supply this type of wire harness assembly in medium to high volume quantities. It has saved our customer a significant amount of in-house assembly time, and with its rugged construction, it provides long-term performance reliability in critical subsea search vehicles.To learn more about our wire harness assembly capabilities or any of our other contract manufacturing services, contact us directly.