Automated Wire Feeding and Crimping Machine

In Partnership With:

University of California, San Diego

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

MAE 156B: Senior Design Project (Winter 2024)

Project background and objective:

Our project, sponsored by Performant Manufacturing, is an automated wire feeding and crimping system. As part of their manufacturing capabilities, Performant uses custom wire harnesses in their electromechanical assemblies. In the past, these harnesses have been made by hand. The process of cutting, stripping, and crimping these wires by hand is very labor/time intensive; thus motivating the creation of the project. By automating wire harness production, Performant's staff can spend more time engineering and less time building wire harnesses.

As part of their wire harness production process, Performant was already in possession of a machine capable of cutting and stripping wires in a programmable, semi-automatic system. The objective of our project was to augment this system by integrating a wire feeder to the input of the machine, and a wire crimper at the outlet of the machine.

Functional requirements:

Select and feed 5 different wire spools
Crimp one end of the wire with a Molex microfit pin
Integrate with the off-the-shelf wire-cutting/stripping machine
Operate via a robust user interface

Final Design

The achieved design solution is a synthesis of a variety of subassemblies that integrate with the off-the-shelf cut/strip machine and the master controller. These components are shown below: