Wire Braiding

I thought this might be useful to some people. When builing simulators there is always going to be wiring somewhere. Some people prefer to have their wiring hidden. In my spare time I like to do some car wiring and I rebuild and braid looms for people for show cars. When I build my simulator I will be braiding the wiring to keep everything nice and organised and tidy. I know some of you probably do this already.

I can do a quick tutorial with more pics for everyone when I get some time later this week.
But here is some examples of my work.

Barry,
That's beautiful work....
Like you, I hate a pile of spaghetti showing, "anywhere"..
I'm almost ready to build my electronics box and would love to see a tutorial from you.

Thank you for the willingness to show us your trade.

Tom

Pictures aren't showing up?

Nice sleeving man

Well done yes Im bad for having wiring everywhere, but do spiral wrap it all together when finished.
Good idea to show others how its done, Thanks.

@Barry : yes, sharing your knowledge would be appreciated

Personnaly I'm refereing to this tutorial for my needs: it's in french but pictures are self-explanatory
http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Overcl...gainage-cablage-shrinkless-sujet_278320_1.htm

That's a very detailed and very good tutorial.
I'll make mine a little more basic with just a few basic tips to help. It's a simple but time consuming process where a few of the correct tools make it much easier to do than not having them.

Ok so here's a brief run down of how to do some simple braiding. This can be applied to any wiring but in this demo I used a section of wiring from a car which is used for installing cruise control.

Stuff you will need:
A selection of heat shrink wrap of various sizes. This can be got from ebay very cheap.
A selection of braided sleeving ov various sizes. Again, easily available from ebay.
Insulating tape or masking tape.
A knife, or blade, or wire stripper.
A heatgun
Wire snips.
Optional - for removing wires from connectors a terminal removal set is very useful.

Here's my section of wiring and connector. This is from cruise control from a VW Golf.



As you can see I keep a large amount of sleeving and heatshrink wrap as I work with wiring a lot. These cover me for all wire bundle sizes from a single wire up to around 25mm.




First step - slide a piece of heatshrink wrap up to the connector on the end of the wiring.


Then heat that piece up so it shrinks to the end of the loom at the connector. This is for the sleeving and the top piece of heat shrink wrap to grip on to.


Then you need to measure out how much sleeving you need. You should make sure you start in the middle of the piece of heatshrink you have just shrunk to the wires. Then measure out as much as you need to reach the end of the section of wiring you are working on.


Then you can do a little extra step to help slide the sleeving on. If you tape the end of the wires together with insulating tape or masking tape it makes it easy to put the sleeve on.


Then slide the sleeve which you've cut to size onto the wiring.


Position the sleeving so the end is in the middle of the first piece of heatshrink wrap which was applied.
Then cut a slightly larger piece of heatshrink wrap which can go over the wiring, and sleeving. The first piece of heatshrink wrap was for 4mm diameter wiring and this new piece is for 6mm diameter wiring.


Then to make the new piece of larger heat shrink wrap easier to slide on you can also tape up the end of the sleeving to the wiring. Then slide the new piece over. Then you need to heat shrink this so it sandwiches the sleeving between it and the first piece of the heat shrink wrap at the connector end of the wiring. This will stick together and hold it solid and neat at one side.


Then to set up for the other end you need to slide another large piece (6mm) of heat shrink wrap right onto the top of the sleeving. And a smaller piece (4mm) on to just the wiring.


You can then remove the tape from the sleeving and position the smaller piece to be at the end of the sleeving the same as the first end. This gets heat shrunk on, and the sleeving slid over the top and then the larger piece also gets shrunk on to sandwich it in place the same as the first end. (I hope this isn't too confusing).


And there you have a section of braided wiring. It takes a little practice but it's a great way to tidy wiring up and it's very tough and wear resistant but it can be removed easily if needed and there's no need for messy tape or glue of any kind. so the wiring always stays clean.