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January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Wiring and Cabling: How To Lace Cable Harnesses
Many have described Cable Lacing as a lost art and rightly so. With zip ties down in the $0.01 each range it doesn't make any economic sense to expend the labor on lacing. However, anyone that has had to troubleshoot a cable bundle has found that the labor charges were just shifted. Tightly bound cable bundles tend to the norm with some installers actually using a zip tie gun to get them even tighter. (and oh by the way increasing cable cross talk by flattening out the cable pairs) The downside is that if you want to trace a cable's physical path, digging it out of a tightly wrapped bundle starts becoming a big problem. With lacing you have the option of slipping a loop to one side to create a gap and make tracing a bit easier. The other advantage is that lacing doesn't leave sharp ends in the cable trays like those on zip ties with the extra cut off.
So while cable harnesses are still used in the aircraft and auto industry, it might be something the computer industry to consider especially as clusters proliferate masses of cables in the back of our equipment racks. So maybe if folks like HP, Dell and IBM are listening; they might want to consider using a lacing board to pre-build cable harnesses so that the bundles lay nicely, and are easier to trace for troubleshooting? I'm sure it will add to the cost, but a pre-made harness for something like IBM's SAN in a box product makes a lot of sense since they control everything in the rack, right down to the cable management.
So I'm fairly sure that I would love to see more cable lacing rather than zip ties, and I also really like that cable lacing makes my racks that much neater. My problem is justifying the upfront labor cost, especially when I know that some of my racks get changed around frequently. More than likely I'll end up using lacing only for cables bundles that go between patch panels.
I'd love to know if anyone out there is still using cable lacing and why you feel the added expense is justified?
Here's a website that has excerpts from a US Navy training manual on cable harness assembly.
Wiring and Cabling: How To Lace Cable Harnesses
Posted by Brian Chee on January 8, 2008 10:28 AM
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During the planning and install phase couldn't you require (spec) a hook and loop wrap instead plastic zip ties? I've never seen a cabling harness tied this way before. Very cool maybe a lost art that needs revised. I could see this being very helpful in every rack in every data center. Maybe the Interop PEDs need a cabling harness or the reusable ribs could be laced this way.
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Comment from Brian Chee:
The hassles of this type of system is that it is permenent. Adding a cable means redoing the whole thing.
On the good side, the cables lay much flatter in the cable trays, and I love to lace in little labels with the destination and/or serial number(or name) of the cable bundle. That and it looks MUCH better than zip ties. I've seen some old school CO's and lacing just makes it look so much neater and professional.
Though I will admit that there is quite a bit of psychology at work here.
/brian chee
I have to agree with Jones on this one. Velcro seems a better solution inside racks/cabinets. For permanent installations of cable bundles, the braiding sounds okay, but is it easible to do on long runs?
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Comment from Brian Chee
Easier no, more flexible and less likely to snag yes...I tend to use the little bobbins from solder wicks to wind waxed thread on so that it's easier to loop the spool under when doing the running stitch. The other source of nice bobbins is a craft store that has weaving supplies....the weavers shuttle (small) is also a nice thing. VERY similar to what fish net makers use. When you use something like that, the running stitch is actually pretty fast. I like using for rack to rack patch panels.
/brian chee
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