Our team has a bad history with cable management, This year we are trying to do a lot better. Are there any tools or strategies that help keep a robots wiring organized?
Thank you in advance.
Our team has a bad history with cable management, This year we are trying to do a lot better. Are there any tools or strategies that help keep a robots wiring organized?
Thank you in advance.
Do it on paper/Fritzing first. You can layout most of the components digitally and see where all your connections need to go. You can try to group common items together visually.
Sharing Some Fritzing Parts
Use cable ties to create wiring bundles for stuff like power wires that are unlikely to change or be replaced in a hurry. Then tie these down to spots on your drivetrain. When we first were getting started we’d prototype our baseplate with pegboard so we can easily strap down wires and test various layouts.
Label the wires and components with unique identifiers that match your drawings. You can and should invest in a wire label maker to put matching labels on both ends of the wire so you can trace them without having to actually follow the wires through the bundles. Label all of the electrical components like Motor Controllers, motors, and CAN devices with their ID or RoboRio port numbers.
When there is downtime try and cleanup one section or mechanism at a time. Whether this is during a lunch break at competition or back in your lab. There will be downtime where the robot is not running and if you work on one area at a time it’s easy to maintain it. Zipties and wireclips will break over the competition season so keep an eye on these between every match.
Update your drawings as you go through the season. Even a simple change like adding a limit switch needs to be documented so anyone could walk up and find what it’s purpose is and where it should be connected.
My team isn’t the best at it BUT in our better cable managed robots, we laid out all of the electronics and added extra holes for wire routing
Then we used a ton of those plastic squares stickers that you can zip tie to
We also like to use number wires at all do the joints so it’s easy to see which circuit is what
Here is a link to those zip tie mounts from AndyMark: Cable Tie Adhesive Mounting Base - AndyMark, Inc. 4322 uses those as well to mount wires down to our bellypan. We also aim to have all our wires go in 90 degree directions and try not to route them through tubes or anything hard to trace.
Time. Apply more time to the problem. Leave yourselves time to clean things up and iterate; build this into your schedule. Add some time during the design stage (“where’s the hole for that wiring?”), and additional time during build. You might need to sacrifice something else to make neat wiring a reality.
Save some of that time with an automatic wire stripper. I like these. You set a strip length (not a gauge), insert the wire, and squeeze. It’s less painful to redo wiring to make it neat when it takes half the time and no measuring to strip the ends.
Don’t use too many wires. Seriously, ask yourself if you can do it without that extra sensor; it adds a failure point too.
Make wires approximately the right length, such that you have less cable to manage. Leave everything a bit long and trim as you finish different sections. If your goal is neat wiring, you will have to sacrifice some wire in the process.
Once you know what lengths they should be, replace your ethernet cables with ones that are a closer match, pre-made, if possible. Same goes for USB.
Buy lots of zipties. Consider installing them loosely until you’re done working on a section, then tension them in sequence. Also, don’t be afraid to cut all of the zipties in a section off and redo them if you don’t like how it turned out.
Use multi-conductor cable for signal wires, if you can get it. If not, you can also bundle wires by twisting them. I don’t recommend this for power wiring, though.
If a wire or bundle is going to be stressed (e.g., it’s going from a stationary part to a moving part and this is its last attachment point), consider using loop clamps. They can be plastic or metal, and can have rubber guards. The adhesive on those sticky-backed squares isn’t usually up to this job.
Energy Chain looks really slick, but it’s not trivial, especially on fast-moving mechanisms; it needs to be part of your mechanical design. If you plan to use it and you haven’t before, expect an extra mechanical iteration. Use the most flexible wire that you can, and don’t overfill it; buy the next size chain up if you have to.
Split loom can be used to hide lots of sin. That CAN wire you didn’t want to cut, so you looped it back and forth 3 times? Split loom. If the rest of your robot wiring is in loom, it doesn’t look like a band-aid.
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