The
Consumer Market for Cable Assemblies:
Despite Bright Spots, Slow Consumer Market Recovery
The
consumer cable assembly market grew an impressive
30% in 2010, to $5.9 billion, after declining 21.4%
in 2009. It’s hard to call this an upswing, however,
as the consumer market will face an interesting
economic climate in 2012.
The companies that Bishop tracks in this market
segment grew an average of 1.6% in the first three
quarters of 2011 over the first three quarters of
2010, and the combined net income was a mere 0.3%
(down 92% year-over-year). Of the 13 market sectors
that Bishop tracks,
Consumer saw the second-slowest rate of growth.
Although retail sales were up this past holiday
season, year-over-year, the struggling world
economies are still heavily impacting this market.
The consumer market includes entertainment
electronics, such as TVs, games, and music players;
home electronics, such as exercise equipment;
consumer electronics, including major appliances;
and personal electronics, such as hair dryers. In
tough times, these are items that consumers can do
without.
more
David Pheteplace
Managing Director, Cable Assembly Division, Bishop &
Associates Inc.
Email
While dramatic,
continuous change has always been the norm
for computers, television technology
remained relatively static for decades.
However, the past decade brought about
seismic change in the way we watch TV, our
screens, and how they work.
Naturally, that's been facilitated by
specialty connectors.
Wire
Harness Manufacturing Process Management There are no shortcuts to manufacturing a quality
wire harness. But there are ways to plan a more
secure and more cost-effective design process.
Wire harnesses are vital components in modern
transportation platforms such as aircraft and
automobiles. They distribute power and signals
between the various devices that deliver electrical
and electronic functionality. The wire harness set
of a modern automobile is typically also the most
expensive component, after the powertrain. For this
reason, harness manufacturers are under relentless
pressure to reduce costs.
Category 6A Cables?
What
You Need to Know: Category
6A cables are constructed from four balanced, twisted pairs
of insulated solid copper conductors surrounded by an
overall thermoplastic jacket. An optional Mylar-backed
aluminum foil for additional electromagnetic immunity can
enclose the four twisted pairs. These 100-ohm cables are
used in telecommunications cabling systems that are
assembled from up to 100 meters of solid cable and patch
cords, and up to four connectors. The patch cords could also be stranded conductors, which are
used for better flexibility. However, the length of the
patch cord needs to be de-rated when using stranded in order
to achieve the same performance Category
6A is the minimum grade of cabling recommended for support
of the new 10GBASE-T Ethernet application. Both unshielded
twisted-pair (UTP) and shielded twisted-pair category 6A
cable designs are commercially available and supported by
structured cabling standards. ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 and ISO/IEC
11801, 2nd edition, define the electrical
performance of category 6A cable to a bandwidth of 500 MHz,
which is double that of category 6.
Because of the state-of-the-art noise cancellation
capabilities of the 10GBASE-T application, category 6A
cables are additionally defined for the characteristic of
alien crosstalk to limit the effect of undesired signal
coupling from one cable to another. In UTP cable
constructions, alien crosstalk compliance is achieved
through cable-to-cable pair isolation techniques such as
increased overall cable jacket diameter and the
incorporation of dielectric elements to maintain pair
positioning. The overall foil virtually eliminates all alien
crosstalk in category 6A shielded cables, making the need
for additional isolation techniques unnecessary.
Upcoming Cable Assembly Supplier,
February 14: Who ya gonna call for micro coax
cable?
Which Cable Assembly
Suppliers do you want to
know more about this year?
Find out who has the
expertise and products to
help your business grow and
thrive.
2012 will be a year of
learning more about the
suppliers — large and small
— you work with every day
and others who may be part
of your company’s future.
Each issue of Cable
Assembly Supplier will
focus on one or more
suppliers, the products and
services they provide, and
some little-known qualities
that set them apart from the
competition.
We’ll feature these profiles
on our website, and they
will make a direct
connection between the
products you seek at the
Connector Buyers Guide site
and the suppliers who
provide them.
Meet
SOF-TEK
Whether you need help
building a prototype or are
ready to take your assembly
into production, SOF-TEK has
the flexibility and scope of
customer services you need
to design, engineer,
assemble, test, package, and
ship your products.
Molex
has completed the acquisition of Temp-Flex Cable Inc. Temp-Flex
is a specialty manufacturer of wire and cable typically used in
extreme conditions and harsh environments.
Norwood Marking Systems
has appointed Bhavin Davé
to the position of business unit manager, overseeing the
operations of Norwood Marking Systems, Allen Coding Systems, and
Kingsley Machine Company in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.
Davé is responsible for leading strategies that bring the
companies’ coding and marking equipment and consumables to
customers in the food, pharmaceutical, medical device, personal
care, chemical, electronics, aerospace, military, and other
industrial markets.
Alpha Wire
has launched a German version of its
website designed to reach an increasingly diversified customer
base. German-speaking customers are now able to access all
existing website functions, including product filters, data
sheet searches, sample requests, and product brochure downloads,
in a more user-friendly manner. To access the German-language
version of Alpha Wire’s website, simply select “German” from the language drop-down box.
PKC Eesti AS,
an Estonian supplier of electrical wiring harnesses to European
truck makers and a subsidiary of PKC Group Oyj, a Finnish
publicly listed company, has deployed the latest technology from
the Mentor Graphics
Capital® suite of tools at its factory in Estonia. This
technology includes the Capital HarnessXCT product, which
enables harness engineers to rapidly and easily create fully
detailed, validated, and manufacturing-ready harness designs.
Mentor Graphics
has partnered with Mecel,
a subsidiary of Delphi Automotive PLC, in the development of the
industry’s first complete AUTOSAR 4.x solution for the
automotive marketplace. AUTOSAR is currently the largest E/E
(electrical/electronic) standardization project in the
automotive industry. The Mentor Graphics AUTOSAR design tools
(available since 2009) is accompanied by the AUTOSAR BSW. The
Mecel offerings include Mecel Picea BSW, RTE, and configuration
tools, also available since 2009. In their collaboration, Mentor
Graphics and Mecel implemented different portions of the
configuration tool and software stack with jointly ensured
interoperability, enabling both parties to offer the complete
stack to their customers.
2012 WHMA Wire Harness Conference Orlando,
Florida, February 15-17
Timely presentations
on topics that will provide you with the information you
need to improve your operations.
Unparalleled peer networking with fellow manufacturers and
leading suppliers to our industry.
Great setting — the Swan Walt Disney World Resort is in the
heart of Walt Disney World. The Swan features 17 restaurants
and five pools, two health clubs, white sand beach, and
nearby golf. Get the
special WHMA rate
online.
What
You Need to Know: 
