As a spacecraft Assembly, Integration and Test (AIT) Engineer, one of my areas of expertise is harness manufacture and routing. So this naturally involves an awful lot of crimping. I am a certified crimping operator and inspector under the ECSS standards (which go a bit overboard at times in their requirements when compared to the NASA standards).
I am lucky to have built a large amount of harness has/is/will fly on many spacecraft for many customers. There are a lot of unique challenges to crimping for spacecraft harnessing, but in almost all circumstances the main issue has be schedule. Very few project managers that I have worked with, even those who have a lot of experience, plan for enough time to complete the harnessing side of a project.
Depending on the number of crimping configurations that are present in a system, it can take days to calibrate all of the crimp tools before starting. Every crimp needs to be inspected before the heatshrink can be shrunk, and often before the next crimp can be performed if the routing is critical. Routing involves labeling, gluing of tie-bases, bundling of harnessing, and the shielding.... jesus christ the shielding can be a nightmare...
Man I love making harness, honestly one of my favourite things to make. Not sure if anyone cares enough to have questions, but happy to answer them if they exist.
I am lucky to have built a large amount of harness has/is/will fly on many spacecraft for many customers. There are a lot of unique challenges to crimping for spacecraft harnessing, but in almost all circumstances the main issue has be schedule. Very few project managers that I have worked with, even those who have a lot of experience, plan for enough time to complete the harnessing side of a project.
Depending on the number of crimping configurations that are present in a system, it can take days to calibrate all of the crimp tools before starting. Every crimp needs to be inspected before the heatshrink can be shrunk, and often before the next crimp can be performed if the routing is critical. Routing involves labeling, gluing of tie-bases, bundling of harnessing, and the shielding.... jesus christ the shielding can be a nightmare...
Man I love making harness, honestly one of my favourite things to make. Not sure if anyone cares enough to have questions, but happy to answer them if they exist.