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Where to buy numbered/colored wire?

jkilroy

Diamond
Joined
Jul 23, 2004
Location
Vicksburg, MS
I need to find a supplier where I can buy wire for building small harnesses. I am looking for numbered or color coded wire, various gages (12-20), for a harness with 25 individual conductors and I don't want any duplicates.
 
You are probably already aware of this, but
another way to get "more" colors is to use
wire with one solid color, and one stripe
color. Red with white, red with black,
red with green, etc.

You will probably find stripe-tracered wire
a lot easier to come by than factory numbered
wire.

I'd start my search with newark electronics,
and then go from there. There are all kinds
of wire mills out there that will do custom
work but there will probably be large min
orders for each type you purchase.

Jim
 
http://www.lappusa.com

I have used wire from this company several times in various applications. Multi conductor cables can be quite pricey. I am currently working on a project useing a 20 conductor multi-color wire and don't like it. I wish I had specified a numbered wire instead.

If you find a distributor for Lapp in your area the same supply house may have another line for a bit less.

Luke
 
Depending of the wire gage, amp requirements etc etc, maybe bell wire like the phone company uses.
Or maybe wire tags from almost any electrical supply store. Make up the harness and then number the wires. I believe Jim Rozen (above post) hit the nail on the head with Newark Electric. When I was with NCR (National Cash Register), they used white wire and ran it through a printer. It printed the starting terminal and the ending terminal on the wire. The numbers were printed every 6 or 8 inches the full length of the wire. Any place you looked at the wire, you could tell where the wire came from and where it was going. Sounds expensive but if you consider printing up 25 spools of wire with your identification numbers on them then start making your harnesses. When a spool runs out, print another one and keep producing the harnesses.
Just some food for thought.
Regards Walt.....
 
jkilroy,
How much are you looking for? I think I might have some 20-30 conductor cable. This is color coded.I would have to check over the weekend to see what it is for sure. Let me know.

Michael
 
How about using the clip on plastic number tags such as are all over Hardinge wiring harness? From any mail order electrical supplier.

Regards, Jim
 
Wow, WB, I bet they kick back and toast each other at McMaster central when someone orders a 250 foot spool of the above :D

My personal preference is the Brady heat-shrinkable tubes that you print on while still flat.

The labels print in a Brady ID Pro Plus printer or possibly other Brady printers...print whatever you want on there, open/expand the label into a tube, and put it on the wire, then heat-shrink.

There's glue inside, the printing appears to get fused by the heat.

Grainger has them, they are not cheap, but won't fall off after 10 years like most adhesive labels. Then you can continue on and use regular wire.
 
Leave it to McMaster Carr to answer all requests. :D Of course that would do just fine if I could get away with 16ga conductors, problem is I need a mix. 16 22ga, and the rest 12ga.

Thats a lot of good suggestions and I have checked out all of those web sites and I am sure I can find what I need, thanks.

Matt, I have looked into those heat shrink printers and they are not that expensize. However, the labor to make and install them is! It is an option that we are looking at.
 
Kilroy, you might want to call Madison Electronics in Michigan. I usually speak to Rich Glowacz.

http://www.madisonelectric.com/electronics.htm

They build "sine" (multiconductor) cables with twistlock amphenol connectors on both ends to custom order (these are heavily used in auto plants).

They may have the wire/cable that you need, with a mix of conductor sizes. Some have a mix of THHN and "blue hose" shielded cable inside the same outer jacket. I think the conductors are also numbered internally, now that I think of it.

Also, if the cable will undergo any kind of repeated flexing, just invest in a superflex/continuous flex cable right now, more expensive at first, but will be cheaper in the long run.
 
Hello Guys,

I build new machines,retrofit controls,and service machines. I have found this company www.igus.com they have very good cables. They have special cables like for motor install that has enough wires to run motor,tach feed back and other feed back in one cable. The cable is warranty in most case for a certain # of million bends,oil,and chemical rsistant. It does not get hard and brittle. They have wire ways and flex conduit.

Hope this helps. :cool:

regards
DD
 
Try the electronic supply houses: Newark, Mouser, Digi-Key, etc.

Finding numbered wire may be difficult and more expensive. Most wire is color coded.

As for actually buying the wire, I often purchase multiple conductor cables and strip off the outer jacket. If you want 25 colors, get a 25 conductor cable. A 100 foot reel will give you 2500 feet of wire for a lot less than 25 individual reels. For that many colors, you will probably need to go to striped wire. Often they are in pairs like red with a blue stripe paired with blue with a red stripe.

If you want to see the selection available, check out Belden or Alpha Wire on the web. Others also.
 
Lapp is what we use (olflex).
some of it is really expensive-- but it's rated at millions of cycles at various bend radii.
It's numbered, and has a green/yellow ground.
we regularly use 25 conductor cable.

Another way.. on spool wire we use MTW wire, we have a labeler that uses heat shrink tube that we can print numbers, etc. on, or just a marker with a neat self sealing tape.
idexpert
 
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Igus as deckledoctor suggested. They make the best machine tool wiring out there.
A story about wire markers.
One day a good customer called me to service an old Devlig jig mill, had an electrical problem. After talking to the operator I pulled the schematics and was prepared to check out a certain contactor as it must not have been pulling in. This machine was filled with relays and contactors and bundles of red wires. Well, I opened the electrical panel and the entire bottom of the box was littered with wire number tags and relay/contactor labels. Seems all the glue had hit it's expiration date! Nothing I could do, I wasn't spending a month trying to relabel and ring all the wires out. Machine was scrapped.

Mr Bridgeport
 








 
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