Hello! My name is Steve Floyd, Shop Foreman at InterConnect Wiring. Today we’re going to be talking about how to remove and strip the insulation from an F-16 Wiring Harness.
Wiring Harnesses – Aircraft Rewiring – Cockpit Panels – Console Wiring
Stripping Insulation
As a top supplier for Lockheed Martin and Boeing, we’re held to specific requirements for our insulation removal on our wires. Cohesively, eventually, these wires will fit into an avionics system to be later installed in the fighter aircraft.
So, for the first step, we want to remove a specific length of the insulation to fit our contact. On these mechanical strip tools, there are different gauge blades. For example, this is a 22-gauge blade that will remove the insulation, leaving the conductor clean and usable for a contact. On these mechanical strip tools, the length is determined by the barrel of the contact; so, we want to make sure that we remove the correct amount of insulation to fit into the contact. We squeeze the handles together and remove the insulation from the bare conductor, exposing the conductor beneath the insulation.
For the next insulation removal, we’re going to be removing the insulation on a twisted pair conductor. First, we want to make a small cut at a specific given length in the insulation of the twisted pair. Place this tool on the edge of where we’re going to make our first cut, and wind it around the outside of the insulation. That makes a clean break in the insulation so that we can go ahead and insert it into our extraction tool. We’ll start by opening the tool. This allows for enough space to slide the wire down into the cavity in order for us to extract the insulation from the wire. There’s a small dot here by what we call the “die”. This determines the size of blade that we’re going to use in order to remove the insulation. Next, is the fun part… We pull, and it twists the insulation, which allows for our operator to easily remove the outer insulation of this cable jacket.
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