A wire harness assembly is a collection of wires and/or cables held together with conduit tubing, straps, or cable ties. Alternately known as cable harnesses or cable assemblies, they can send data and give power to the device or system they are connected to. The grouping of these wire provides an easier time to tell which single wires should be connected to which ends — it can still be helpful to label the wires anyway.
Identifying Individual Wire Harness Cables
Cable harness manufacturers label wires to convey different types of information. Types of labels include:
- Barcodes: there are many formats of barcodes available that can provide engineers with different information in a simple, scannable form.
- Text: wire harness manufacturers normally include date codes, ID numbers, and other similar information in the form of text so that engineers can find and understand the information quickly without having to look up any signals or scan barcodes.
- Certification codes: wire harness assemblies are labeled with these codes if they are to be used in UL-certified products.
Color Coding
There are many cases in which building a wire harness assembly composed of differently colored wires is enough for engineers to differentiate between them. Nonetheless, a color used by one business may have an entirely different meaning compared to the same color used by another. This can create problems if the bundle needs to be wired into the other business’ product. To prevent this kind of confusion, it is much safer for wire harness manufacturers to label their wire bundles with numbers, images, words, and barcodes.