By Christopher E. Strangio, CAMI Research, Inc. -- Advances in computer automation over the past three decades have brought dramatically increased productivity to electronics manufacturing. Populating printed circuit boards with components, as well as soldering, cleaning, inspection, and testing, can now be handled almost entirely by computer-controlled machinery.
Unfortunately, the field of cable and wire harness assembly has not seen such marked advances. The core task of inserting pinned wires into connector cavities relies largely on the acuity of human vision to guide human fingers, feats of computation and control that cannot be equalled by any present day machine.
Nonetheless, we seek methods within reach of current technology that provide helper functions for assembly technicians whose job it is to mate pinned wires with connector shells, the most time consuming and error-prone aspect of harness assembly.
Download Full Article (PDF): Computer Guided Harness Assembly
Christopher E. Strangio is the founder, president, and director of marketing at CAMI Research Inc.
