Construction of a wire harness (or loom)

Gary Seven

Rocketman
Just viewed this excellent video on the making of a wire harness. I've been sorta wondering to myself the right way to do this and this vid really helped. So I'd thought I would share:

Thanks to Ecks over at RCG for the link and the help.
 

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Gary, pretty good video but he's using the iron to melt the solder when he should be heating up the wires and allowing the solder to melt into the hot wires. A bit of solder on the tip of the iron to improve heat transfer is ok but using the hot iron to do the work of melting the solder is a no-no. if the wires aren't hot enough you end up with an outer shell of solder that hasn't penetrated the bundle and joined the wires together.

the little wire-ties he's used aren't such a great idea as the small diameter wire in the tie can cut through the wire's insulation and short it out against the carbon fiber frame.

all in all it presents a nice illustration as to how different size wires can be joined to make a power distribution harness, a method i prefer over power dist. boards. some of the technique is a little overkill (for example, you don't have to tin the tip prior to every single joint) IMHO but if it gets people thinking about this stuff then it's all good!

thanks for posting that.
bart
 

Gary Seven

Rocketman
Bart, thanks for the feedback. I posted this because I've been driving myself nuts trying to figure out how to build a harness properly. This video is the first time I've actually seen it done (remember, I'm still a newbie at RC) and helped me to instantly see some mistakes I made when trying to harness four JST leads together. Truth is, I simply don't have the soldering skills like I saw on that video.

Thanks heaps for pointing out the errors in his process. I was wondering about the wire ties too...thought it was a bit funky IMHO.

I've been reading a lot of threads lately with some posters (not here on this forum...the other forum) expressing doubt about the integrity of PDB's, especially over time. I've seen some people come back and say wiring harness' are the way to go, even though in my mind PDB's are so much cleaner. Wow, so MUCH to learn!
 

Old Man

Active Member
The secret to soldering isn't that much of a secret. The right size tip, the correct heat range for the wire size, heating the wire, not the solder, and wire immobility. A set of "helping hands" can be very useful, as well as making a small capture jig to hold connectors stable for tinning and wire soldering. One can buy those or look at a couple commercial versions online and see how easy they are to make yourself. MaxAmps has once in their product line up. You can be as creative as you want if you make your own. A drill press is a most useful tool in this.
 

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