The Complete Manufacturing Process of Electronic Cables

Have you ever wondered how a USB cable is made? Actually, not only USB cables, all the electronic cables we see everyday can be divided into two parts: the cable and the connector. To make a USB cable that can be use is just to connect the cable and connector. Thus, all the electronic cables are made through a similar process. In the following paragraphs, we’ll show you what the process is.

Step 1: Cable cutting

The raw cable often comes in very long, so we need to cut it into appropriate length, e.g. 1 meter or 2 meters, to meet the customers’ requirements.

Step 2: Expose the inner conductor

As the picture shows above, cables are an assembly of more than one wire, and there are braid and foil to prevent electromagnetic interference. In step 2, we need to expose the inner conductor so that we can connect them to the connector in the following step.

• Outer jacket stripping: strip the jacket that protects whole cable.
• Braid arrangement: clear braid out, weave and fold them to the opposite direction.
• Foil stripping: strip the foil under the braid to expose the core wire inside.
• Inner jacket stripping: finally we get the conductors out by stripping their jacket.

Step 3: Link the wire and terminal

Generally, we use tin to solder these electronic products. Tin has many characteristics: relatively low melting point; good fluidity when melted; good affinity to iron or copper surface. These all make tin soldering the best choice in electronic industry.

• Tin dipping: dip the endpoint of conductor in soldering flux first, then dip them in fluid tin.
• Soldering: solder the conductor and the pin point of the connector according to the color of wire, which indicates the usage of wire.
• Soldering examination: exam if the soldering point meets the requirement.

Step 4: Molding

In this step, we’re going to cover back the joint of the cable and connector using the injection molding machine.

• Internal injection molding: mold the first layer of protection plastic.
• For some types of products, install the iron shell.
• Electrical performance test for the first time: test the electrical performance of semi-finished products using a electrical test instrument.
• External injection molding: put the semi-finished products that pass the test into molding machine, then mold the final layer of protection plastic with the logo and tag on it.
• Electrical performance test for the second time: exam the electrical performance of the final products.

 Step 5: Final check and packaging

Check the appearance of cables, and beware of flaws like flash, underfilled, surface check or anything else. Make sure that all defective products are cleared out, then package the rest according to needs of customers.

That’s all for what we have to say for cable manufacturing. Want to know more about cable? Contact us or leave your comment, come on!

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