Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Damage to flex / cables

Status
Not open for further replies.

fingaz

Member
Hi all,

I am absolutely fed up with telling people at work not to wrap the cables too tightly on on some of our equipment (I work in a hospital, so I work mostly with women). Some of these leads / cables are around about £250 each!

Does anyone know if any research had been done looking at damage caused by bending, stretching or wrapping cables / wires.

If I can show them some evidence of the damage being caused I think would be better able to 'discourage' staff from potentially causing damage to equipment.

Any help will be appreciated.

EDIT : I have tried googling, but all I got was a load of rubbish about cable ties (tie wraps)
 
Last edited:
Hi all,

I am absolutely fed up with telling people at work not to wrap the cables too tightly on on some of our equipment (I work in a hospital, so I work mostly with women). Some of these leads / cables are around about £250 each!

Does anyone know if any research had been done looking at damage caused by bending, stretching or wrapping cables / wires.

If I can show them some evidence of the damage being caused I think would be better able to 'discourage' staff from potentially causing damage to equipment.

Any help will be appreciated.

EDIT : I have tried googling, but all I got was a load of rubbish about cable ties (tie wraps)


Well I certainly don't know it there is a research study on this subject but cable failure at connection points is certainly a reliablity challenge for many designs. Proper strain relief, connector types, proper wire type and insulation properties all enter into the picture.

Certainly cabling that is running external to a device and is subject to lots of pulling, twisting and wrapping is a good candidate for failure. I've reconditioned a lot of turntables of 70s vintage hi-fi equipment and a real common failure point is the low capacitiance coaxial cable that leaves the turntable to the magnetic cartridge input on the pre-amplifier. The cable would get hard over time and with flexing the thin center conductor would break internally sometimes intermittenly, normally right at the strain relief point entering the turntable base.

Not sure that helps but you have identifed a common failure point in electrical equipment.

Lefty
 
Last edited:
Google "festooning" applications
 
Most wire manufacturers specify what the minimum bend radius is. Surely the manufacturer of the probes has some handling guidelines for their product?
Example:
**broken link removed**
 
Last edited:
Hi all,

Thanks for the info / suggestions. As I said, it's mostly female staff who are wrapping the cables too tightly. Not being sexist, but most of them are techno-phobic and don't have a clue on looking after the diagnostic machines. I'll keep looking for some 'evidence' that what they are doing is causing damage to the cables.

Thanks anyway guys.
 
Perhaps if you show the Dept head of the would be cable abusers, the repair bills for replacement cables. Maybe in the form of a memo endorsed by your dept head.
 
Last edited:
I don't see how that helps as he most likely has to work with what is already on hand.
It helps because the OP may find products and companies that can address the problems. Besides who died and appointed you the arbiter of what is and is not appropriate in terms of a response. As if you had a monopoly on good advice. Here it is free and it's worth the price.
 
Last edited:
Hey,

Thanks to EVERYONE who offered info/advice. No point arguing over it, in the scheme of things it's not that important. It's just something that bugs me.

Neil
 
Hey,

Thanks to EVERYONE who offered info/advice. No point arguing over it, in the scheme of things it's not that important. It's just something that bugs me.

Neil

Part of the facts of life. The best maintenance reliability program is one which understands the costs of, and helps prevents people from breaking stuff in the first place. It's primarily a educational challenge to get people to understand and respect the equipment that they operate. It's hard to engineer things to be idiot proof as the idiots are so numerous and they never give up ;)
 
It's hard to engineer things to be idiot proof as the idiots are so numerous and they never give up ;)

Never thought of it that way, but you're right. There's always a new idiot who comes along and messes things up.
 
Just show them these pics and tell them that the wires broke inside the sleeve and did that to itself :D


**broken link removed**
imgres
 
From what I have found , there is nothing more annoying than a whiney little twit chasing me around, telling me how tight to wind something...especially of hes wearing a pocket protector.
. Suggest it once, explain why...then leave it alone. Besides..thats what budgets are for..to replace items buggered up by the average joe...and its probibly one of he things that keep you employed.
 
From what I have found , there is nothing more annoying than a whiney little twit chasing me around, telling me how tight to wind something...especially of hes wearing a pocket protector.
. Suggest it once, explain why...then leave it alone. Besides..thats what budgets are for..to replace items buggered up by the average joe...and its probibly one of he things that keep you employed.

Yes, I agree, that's what budgets are for. However I don't see why we should spend money replacing things which are damaged because people are not looking after them correctly. The fact that items can be repaired or replaced is no excuse for not looking after them. I have had numerous arguments with members of staff who seem to think that wrapping the cables too loosely is the cause of the damage.

I have no doubt that if these items were 'domestic items' in the peoples own homes, they would not want to keep replacing them because they can't look after them. To argue that there is a budget for replacement, is not reasonable. The money that could be saved on things like this, I would guess is hundreds of thousands of pounds throughout the trust over a year. This is money that would be better spent on improving patient care.
 
What a coincidence :D Everybody does the same! At my university, they always leave the earphones CONNECTED into the jack, then bend the wire 180°, and wrap them around the iPod as hard as they can, then throw all into the bag or the pocket. I'm happy earning money fixing that, but normally they just throw them away and buy newones when one channel dies.

If Mtv campaign to collect those damaged earphones, they would become even more rich, ***again*** thanks to those idiots

Perhaps, as fingaz said, a failure on medical equipment is unaceptable! Unless of course, if you shell the body (called "pacient" hours before) to the medicine school, and use that money replacing the damaged wires.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top