ECE 539

Automotive Wiring Harness

Manufacturing Process

Prepared by: Carlos Ayala

Date: February 5 1999

Introduction
This report describes the manufacture and assembly process for an
automotive wiring harness. The main function of a harness is to transmit
power to the different components and modules in the automotive. The
range of complexity for a wiring harness depends by the quantity of wires
and components required for complete its assembly. I will use a medium
size harness for illustrations and examples.

This report will follow the sequence that the operations occur in the actual
manufacturing process. This sequence is not strictly followed in all the
cases, in fact there are many operations that can be perform at the same
time and the particular sequence will depend in the specific wiring
harness design. Storage, incoming inspection and packaging will not be
included in this report.

Contents
1)

• Cutting and crimping

• Preparation of circuits and subassemblies

• Assembly Process (manufacturing strategies)

• Testing (Electrical Continuity and visual inspection)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)
Cutting and Crimp Termination
The first part of the wiring harness manufacturing process is the preparation of the
“circuits”. Circuit is a wire cut at the required length and with terminals in one or both
ends, in other words is the raw material converted useful component for the wiring
harness assembly. The parameters that define a circuit are the color, insulation
material, gage, strands and terminals. Other characteristics often used are wire seal
and shrinking tubes. About 100 circuits compound a typical medium size harness.
The document that encloses all characteristics for particular circuit is the Cut sheet.
The information required to develop the cutsheet comes from the wiring harness
blue print and translated in manufacturing terms.

Samples of different circuits

The typical equipment that is required during this phase is an automatic cutting
machine. This machine is a high tech piece of equipment drive by the use of a
computer. The operator will introduce the circuit parameters in its memory and set
up the tooling and material required.

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The wire is pull from the wire-packaging barrel by the feeding system in an
automatic wire processing machine and cut the raw wire to the required length. A
short length of insulation is remove from both ends of the circuit. A mechanical arm
will hold the end of the circuit and lead it to the die applicator station, passing though
a sensor, which will verify that the circuit end has been strip correctly. Once the
circuit end arrives to the die applicator station and it is in correct position, the
machine will activate a 5-ton press to apply the terminal. The terminal is present in a
roll loaded over a carrier strip and is pull from the die applicator. Finally, the circuit is
deliver to a container, which is release in batches. The cycle of this complete circuit
processing takes only a few seconds and will be repeating as the quantity desire.

Almost all parameters in the cutter are easy to adjust according to the circuit
characteristics with the exception of the terminal applicator. The terminal die is a
customized tool for each type of terminal, and is adjust for particular wire size-
insulation and terminal combination. The optimization of the cutter machine in large
will depends of the capacity for performing a quick tooling change in the machine.
Some smed techniques are use in order to minimize the set-up time. For low volume
of circuits is necessary to create a buffer of circuits in order to optimize the machine
set-up.

During this phase, crimping is the most critical operation because is going to
determinate the electrical continuity between the terminal and wire. There are two
parameters considered in direct relationship with conductivity. Those parameters
must be monitoring in order to assure the quality of the crimping. First the pull force
required to remove a crimped terminal from the wire and the second is the shape of
the crimping area (high and width dimensions).

Figure 2 shows the cross section photo of a good crimping conditions.

Figure 2

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Each terminal type will require different high and width parameters and actually
different gages of the same terminal type will also require different parameters.
Figure 3 illustrate a table of values required for the same terminal type in several
gage applications.

Figure 3

Because the importance of having a good crimping condition the process requires
very, close monitoring. Since the cutting rate is about 3,000 circuits per hour is very
difficult the implementation of SPC. A very good aid for monitoring 100% of the
production is a device called crimp force monitor (CFM). The CFM is an electronic

device connected to the CPU of the cuter. The CFM will compare a curve of force
required by the system to apply good crimping Vs every single application that
follows the same pattern. When there is a terminal change a new curve, have to be
generating with the first ten samples. The material variation (terminal and wire),
defective wire processing, wrong material and mechanical failures are the reasons
of deviation from the sample curve.

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Once the cutting and crimping process are complete the some circuits will go directly
to the assembly line and others will go to the Preparation of circuits and
subassemblies area.

Preparation of circuits and

subassemblies
The most common processes involve in a circuit preparation are:

a) Circuits Splicing:
Circuits splicing are use in places where, as a result of the design of the wiring
harness, there is not other possibility of a fixing wiring connection. In addition, it is
use to avoid complicated looping of the individual circuits from one consuming
device to another.

The circuit splicing are used as wiring distributors and serve to distribute the current
from the supply line to the individual consumer supply lines.

From thee approved methods for splicing, ultrasonic welding is the one that will
provide best quality of conductivity. Also ultrasonic welding process is clean, fast
and uses no consumables.

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The ultrasonic welds are produced by the introduction of high frequency mechanical
vibration between two components. One component is held stationary while the
other is "scrubbed" against it at 20,000 or 40,000 cycles per second. When pressure
is applied between the two components, the surface films and oxides are dispersed
and precisely controlled friction weld is achieved. As the molecules are mixed
between similar or dissimilar metals at the weld interface, the true metallurgic bond
is produced.

The wires to be joined are placed between the tip and the anvil in the ultrasonic
welder by the operator and depressing the foot switch starts the weld cycle. An air
cylinder advances the ultrasonic stack to compact the wire within the cavity formed
by the tip and anvil (see figure) 4. The ultrasonic vibration of the tip scrubs the wires
against each other causing the bonding between wire strands. At completion of the
time cycle, the tip retracts permitting the weld nugget to be removed.

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Once the join is complete, the nugget is insulated using dielectric tape or heat
shrinking tube.

As more wires are present on each side of a splice, the difficulty in positioning the
wires within the welder cavity increases. This depends on the size of the wires that
the operator must pick and arrange in the cavity. This can result in poor quality
welds and in some cases frayed strands.

As well as crimping, the conductivity of the splice is very important, and the
parameters in direct relationship with conductivity are, the nugget dimension and the
pull force required for take apart a circuit from the welding. The nugget dimensions
(high and width) are automatically controlled by the ultrasonic welding machine and
in fact SPC can be monitored automatically as well. The pull force is also monitored
by SPC sampling the process and plotting results.

b) Molding

The mold process has several applications in the manufacture of wiring assemblies.
Mold insulation is used over terminals, connectors, splices, and on harness
branches. The most common use is on grommets molded over the harness branch
and used in those places where the wiring harness has to pass through the
automotive frame. Grommets are used as a sealing component to prevent water
intrusion and noise reduction.

There are several types of molding machines and its application will depend on,
mold size and mold material. One of the molding machines with wider applications is
the Newbury injection-molding machine. This is a 30-ton reciprocating screw
machine and has capacity for manufacture in 1 and 3 ounces and mold a wide
variety of plastic materials. The machine is equipped with a lower mold shuttle which
allows parts to be located into 1 mold half while the part in the other mold half is
being process. The cycle time is a function of how large the shot is the material
being used, and the design of the part. Large parts with thick wall sections require
more curing time to stabilize dimensions.

The sequence of operation is as follow: At the conclusion of the cycle, the clamp
opens and the machine stops. The operator that was installing the harness in the
other half of mold depress the two close-mold pushbuttons simultaneously causing
the shuttle table to shift, and place the mold half with the wiring in it under the clamp.

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After a hesitation, the mold closes and the cycle start over, providing the
pushbuttons remain depressed. If the pushbuttons are released during the hesitation
period, the machine will not continue the cycle until the buttons are again
depressed.

Although molded parts are very useful in wiring harnesses, its use has decreased
significantly due the high quality risk and extreme safety actions required to operate
the equipment.

New connectors design has replaced molds in terminals and connectors, and e--
molded rubber Applied grommets are now available for replace the molded
grommets. Applied grommets are now more common that mold grommets an its
assembly is much simpler than a molded grommet. The grommet stretcher is the
devices used for attach the grommet to the harness and can vary from manual to a
pneumatic device.

Assembly Process
The assembly process is the major step in the wiring harness manufacturing
process. Harness assembly is an operator dependent process and the goal is to
reduce this and increase automation. Here all the components of a wiring harness
are assembly to complete the part.

Unlikely the other process production lines in assembly have to be separated by

family harness. A family harness is compounded by a group of harnesses that are
similar and can be produced in the same tool.

Several manufacturing techniques can be used to complete the harness assembly.

A rotary assembly line consists of Jigboards, conveyor rotary and off-line equipment.
Jigboards are mounted on top of the conveyor rotary chain, which moves the
Jigboards in a horizontal flow rotating around the conveyor.

The Jigboards is the harness assembly tool and is made of wood or perforate steel
to hold the wiring harness during its assembly. It serves as an aid in getting the

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correct dimensions, orientations and provides ease in taping, blocking and wire
stringing operations.

The jigs are individually mounted on a jig car, which are hooked to the rotary
conveyor chain. The jig is a board with an overlay sheet pasted on the surface and
covered with a plastic protection. The overlay is the drawing representation of the
part and indicates position for the jig components such as holding fixtures for
connectors and clips, brackets, forks and indicators. The jig components assist in
holding connectors and circuits, routing bundles, taping and clip presentation.

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Overlay for 98AG-14401 wiring harness family

Rotary conveyors consist of 10-foot sections and 2 end sections together with a
variable high-speed torque motor. It provides the circular transfer motion of the
boards during assembly operations. The rotary is designed for continuos motion at a
set speed necessary for the line to catch up with the production schedule. The rotary
line is designed to produce a specific number of harnesses per rotation.

Wiring assembly production line using the Rotary concept.

The production output is controlled by the speed of the conveyor. The assembly
starts at one point of the rotary (first end), is partially assembly in the different
workstations, and is completed as the rotary conveyor is transferring it from one
station to another. The harness is taken off in the other end of the rotary when it is
complete.

OUT

IN
Assembly set-up

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Electrical Testing.
After the last operation affecting continuity, all wiring assemblies shall be electrically
tested 100%. The electrical test must check for crossed circuits, opens and shorts.
Connectors that are mounted to a bracket before shipment, clips and other
components must be checked to verify that they are in the correct position. The test
is conducted sequentially, testing each circuit and each branch of each circuit. This
test includes the functionality of electronic components as diodes or relays.
Connectors assemblies that uses a secondary terminal lock component such a
wedge or bar are also tested to verify the presence and correct position of this
secondary lock component.

All wire assembly harness is subject to the continuity test. It is required re-testing all
positions if any connector fails to have every position successful tested.

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Once the test is successful complete, the test board provides the operator with a
“success signal” and releases the locking mechanism on the fixtures that hold the

connectors.

Modular electrical test boar

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