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Marking wires

Anchorage, AK
Does anyone have a good technic for marking wires? I’ve been doing more and more electrical work lately. All I’ve come up with so far is writing on heat shrink which is tedious.
 
I make a spreadsheet in Excel with all of my wire numbers in a REALLY small font, bolded, and print it out. I cut the wire number I want, slide it into clear heat shrink (1/8" clear think), slide that on the wire and heat away. I use this on wires down to 22ga. I haven't tried smaller wire as I haven't had a need for it.

Turns out perfect every time is quick and is waaaaaaay cheaper than one of those fancy heat-shrink-label-printers with the expensive printable heat shrink labels.

Mark
 
Just did a bunch of wires down to 18 gauge tefzel using ~$15 P-Touch labelmaker, with flexible tape and small font, covered with clear shrink tube. In the past I've used the Electrician's number tabs in little tear-off book, but with the P-Touch, you can include a text descriptor, not just a number.

One other hint which is helpful, is to label not only both ends, but every couple feet in the middle. Helps future troubleshooting. The factory, and some large avionics shops have a machine which will apply number every foot or whatever it is that Mil-spec calls for.

Thanks. cubscout
 
Just did a bunch of wires down to 18 gauge tefzel using ~$15 P-Touch labelmaker, with flexible tape and small font, covered with clear shrink tube. In the past I've used the Electrician's number tabs in little tear-off book, but with the P-Touch, you can include a text descriptor, not just a number.

One other hint which is helpful, is to label not only both ends, but every couple feet in the middle. Helps future troubleshooting. The factory, and some large avionics shops have a machine which will apply number every foot or whatever it is that Mil-spec calls for.

Thanks. cubscout

AC 43.13 says wire should be marked every 15" max. Key word is "should".
 
Most of the wiring I work with is 22, 20, 18ga, etc. So I went and bought the machine to mark them directly. It stamps the numbers onto single and single shielded wires. I only use sleeves on 2+ multi conductor. But I go through more wire in a month than most will in a lifetime.

Web
 
I just tried out the Dymo Rhino 4200. For $100 with a couple of spools of cable marker I am reasonably happy. The smaller wire is 18. To get the text vertical you need to go to the General mode.

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I used a Panduit LS8E with their 1/8" heatshrink tubing cartridges. It was sitting around for a number of years leftover from an old job. Pretty pleased with the results. Looks like the printer can be had for $100 on ebay and the cartridges were about $30 when I bought them. Sharpie on heat shrink (before shrinking) is cheaper and probably less hassle. I put clear heat shrink over most of my labels due to past experience with smearing. Almost completely unnecessary on wires that are touched maybe twice in a lifetime.

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I’m still using my dymo. And found amazon has multipacks of genuine unboxed heat shrink much cheaper. And dymo has released the interconnect software for free I run on a old xp windows machine. I copy paste labels from a spreadsheet converted to pdf, put on thumb drive, I made for the g3x harness. Less chance to mistype then. Only takes me 2 or three hours to make a whole harness worth, and I label each end of wire. Like this 5-GSU25 rs232#1,P251,6W,5O,4B,S:GDU460,P4601,6W,5O,4B,S,rs232#1


Sent from my iPhone using SuperCub.Org
 
Couple months ago I got a new toy in the shop. This new machine laser etches the markings on the wires. Several advantages to this. The markings do not come off with any chemicals, not even MEK. Since a computer controls the printer, I can adjust size, font, and spacing of the characters. And, I can print on any type of wire such as single conductor or shielded. Even multiple conductor wires that I previously needed to mark with sleeves.

I highly recommend having this type of wire marking done for any project from a new install to a complete rewire job.

Web
 

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That's really cool. A friend owns a business manufacturing wiring harnesses and rewired his Cessna 210 that way.
 
Couple months ago I got a new toy in the shop. This new machine laser etches the markings on the wires. Several advantages to this. The markings do not come off with any chemicals, not even MEK. Since a computer controls the printer, I can adjust size, font, and spacing of the characters. And, I can print on any type of wire such as single conductor or shielded. Even multiple conductor wires that I previously needed to mark with sleeves.

I highly recommend having this type of wire marking done for any project from a new install to a complete rewire job.

Web
Which one did you get?
 
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