By: Michael Traskos

Infographic – The Journey of An Aerospace Wire

February 21, 2020 Michael Traskos

From beginning of its life, aircraft wire and cable undergo thousands of hours of testing to ensure their reliable performance. To grasp how this process evolves, Lectromec has put together this infographic. Looking for help along the process? We can help with that too. Read more

Understanding Life Prediction Technology

February 13, 2020 Michael Traskos

To understand the basis for wire life prediction, there are parts of the process that must be understood from a fundamental perspective and how these fundamentals are applied to the long-term reliability and life prediction of the components. This article will cover some of these basics, the research that has gone into this field, and how it is used as part of EWIS sustainment and service life extension projects. Read more

Review of EWIS for Sustainment

January 30, 2020 Michael Traskos

We measure everything that matters. In the last decade, the efforts of organizations to measure EWIS has been progressively increasing. Perhaps this is because wiring is now considered a system, or because regulations and requirements have emerged, or it may be due to a better understanding of the EWIS maintenance costs. Whatever the reason for better EWIS maintenance issue quantification, it has been a positive because there is data available to substantiate aircraft maintenance actions. The old saying is, “You can’t beat something with nothing”, and for too many years, EWIS maintainers were trying to take on EWIS maintenance without supporting data. Read more

S&T 2019 – Meeting Report

December 20, 2019 Michael Traskos

To get the most from the industry, it is necessary to learn and share with the community as much as possible. Some would call it reciprocity, others, seeking to work to a common goal. Whatever you want to call it, the S&T Electrical Systems and Wiring Inter-Agency Meeting was held earlier this month in snowy Cleveland OH in December 2019. The following are a couple of the areas presented and discussed during the meeting. Read more

Impact of Secondary Wire Harness Protection on Heating

December 10, 2019 Michael Traskos

If you are standing outside on a cold winter day, would you be warmer in a T-shirt or in a jacket? The answer is obvious, but somehow that ‘obvious answer’ is obscured when thinking of aircraft wire harness design. A common question of OEMs and aftermarket modifiers is: how much of an impact (if any) does secondary harness protection have on wire harness heating?

Lectromec took time this last week to put together a representative harness and run tests to generate data on the thermal impact of three secondary wire harness protection schemes. While this data is not representative of every wire harness configuration, it does provide a basis for determining if additional testing (or simulation) are needed for your application.

Getting the Right Bonds

November 22, 2019 Michael Traskos

Things were so much easier with aluminum aircraft structures. The structure acted as an EMI shield, electrical grounding could be done right to the structure without additional effort, and the electrical mating of the structure was straight forward. Now, with composite structures, aircraft design concepts such as electrical bonding, particularly in the case of handling lightning strikes, becomes more important.

When done right, the impact of a lightning strike should have a limited impact.

In this article, we review the concepts around primary aircraft bonding, its requirements, and the implementation as they relate to lightning strike.

Non-Standard Standard Part Performance

November 11, 2019 Michael Traskos

Standardized products made by different manufacturers through different processes will undoubtedly yield variable product performance. The expectation is that each ‘qualified’ product should perform comparatively well, but anecdotal evidence suggests that this is not the case. This paper reviews recent work performed by Lectromec investigating the qualified wire/cable performance variability in both qualification tests as […] Read more

SAE Wire and Cable Committee Meeting Update – Fall 2019

November 3, 2019 Michael Traskos

The SAE wire and cable committee held their fall 2019 meeting in San Diego this year. As with every committee meeting, a lot of technical areas were discussed, progress was made, and some new ideas/problems are emerged. As we do after all these meetings, we put together a highlight of some of the talking points from the meeting.

Determining Voltage Drop

October 11, 2019 Michael Traskos

If voltage is applied to a circuit and the attached equipment does not turn on, then there is an issue with either the circuit or the applied voltage (assuming the device is fully functioning). Sometimes glossed over in circuit design, the length and gauge of a wire can impact the voltage to the load; this is known as “voltage drop”. Just as the current carrying capacity of a wire/wire harness is impacted by the system and environment, so too is the voltage drop.

In this article, we go over the idea of voltage drop, guidance on its application in design, and an example of quantifying the voltage drop on a wire/cable.