Woven Wire Design Support: Automation in Electrical Harness Fabrication

The emerging of “fly-by-wire” aircraft has increased the number of electrical wires required per aircraft. With the increased wiring requirements, the electrical harnesses have increased in size, number, and complexity. A byproduct of this increase is the recurring cost of the labor intensive work required to produce the electrical harnesses of the aircraft. This recurring cost can be drastically reduced through the implementation of woven wire design. The woven wire design provides opportunity to process each ribbon as a single unit requiring fewer cuts and routing passes. The attributes needed to automate the fabrication of a harness are found in the woven wire. This is because the ribbons are organized as to type, gauge, and the number of wires per ribbon. The automation of the process of fabricating the harness eliminates the labor intensive work and reduces the human error.