Case Study One: A company who supply state of the art optical, military and medical equipment

During September 2008 Flair Electronics were approached by a new customer with a problem they were desperate to find a solution for.

The customer, a manufacturer of state of the art optical, military and medical equipment were looking for a bespoke cable of a specifically short length, unavailable off the shelf  for a new product that was in development.

The cable, which would use IEEE 1394 Firewire connectors, would be attached to a continuously moving scanning camera enclosed within a small case. The cable had to be extremely flexible in order not to put load on the delicate camera control motor mechanism and needed to transfer an interference free data signal within the confines of the complex electronic equipment. Most of all it needed to be durable and failsafe which meant passing a 600,000 durability cycle test before it would be considered suitable for the equipment.

  With over 30 years experience within the connector and cable business, Flair immediately new that this problem would not be solved with an off the shelf multi-cored cable solution so set about trials in order to find the best materials in order to fulfil the physical properties needed for a robust construction and would guarantee the flexibility needed

After carrying out trials of discrete wires, screened braid and protective coverings, Flair submitted several samples to their customer who set about evaluating the cables for construction and flexibility before choosing one of the cables for the 600, 000 cycle test.

The chosen cable stood up to the cycle test and showed no signs of wear and tear, which was a great result from the first attempt.

Since the successful trials carried out by Flairs customer, the product has moved to pre-production with cables being supplied for five units to be field evaluated before final design and implementation decisions are taken prior to production

Flair has also supplied other connector and cable solutions on the same project, which is ongoing, so watch this space for an update and customer testimony.