Practical Wiring - Professional Motorsport: Preparing Your Workspace
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Preparing Your Workspace
03.30
| 00:00 | - Your workspace can have a large impact in both the quality of your final outcome and the time it takes to get there. |
| 00:06 | There is a saying which I think applies to your workspace when building a professional motorsport wiring harness, and that is tidy house, tidy mind. |
| 00:14 | When you're building your harness you're going to need to be thinking two or three steps ahead of your current position. |
| 00:19 | And it's much easier to do this if you can remove distractions from your workspace. |
| 00:24 | Depending on the size of the harness you're building, they can get quite long and cumbersome to move around on the bench top. |
| 00:30 | When you need to flip over the partially built harness to access the other end the last thing you want is a stray branch knocking a container of terminals off onto the floor. |
| 00:40 | For this reason you're going to want the largest flat table top workspace you can manage. |
| 00:44 | It really can't be too large. |
| 00:46 | But I would suggest a minimum table area of two metres long by 700 millimetres deep. |
| 00:51 | This will give you the length to lay out the majority of the harness and make it easier to measure the distances between branches, and the depth to store your supplies along the back edge out of the way of the harness as you're moving it around. |
| 01:04 | You will also need to have a computer with an internet connection close by. |
| 01:07 | This is for accessing reference material and updating your design as you follow it through. |
| 01:13 | At the professional motorsport level, typically our documentation is going to be finalised digitally. |
| 01:18 | So it can be stored safely and referred to in the future when required. |
| 01:22 | This also means that you'll need to have a mains power supply at your workspace to power or charge your computer and also the other power tools that we will use, like a heat gun. |
| 01:32 | Tool storage is another consideration. |
| 01:34 | Long term tool storage will be up to your individual set up. |
| 01:37 | But some of the cutters, strippers, and crimpers we're going to use are precision devices with tight tolerances. |
| 01:43 | So they need to be stored carefully and protected from the elements. |
| 01:47 | When you're in the middle of a harness build, these tools can have a tendency to spread out over your workspace. |
| 01:53 | Which can become frustrating when you're trying to hold a harness branch in a specific orientation, wrap it in Kapton tape and you need to reach for the scissors which will inevitably be at the other end of the work bench. |
| 02:04 | I like to keep a tote tray on the table top that I can put my tools back into when I'm not using them so I always know where they are and they don't clutter up the workspace. |
| 02:13 | How you store your materials will also need some thought. |
| 02:16 | If you've purchased just the materials you need for a single harness build, this will be less of a concern. |
| 02:22 | You just want to make sure that they are tidy and out of the way until they're needed. |
| 02:26 | If you're planning on building multiple harnesses, the quantity of supplies you order is likely to be much larger and you're going to need specific storage solutions. |
| 02:35 | A rack to store your wire spools on is fairly easy to fabricate and it doesn't need to be elaborate. |
| 02:41 | But you do want to make sure that you leave enough room between the wire spool rack to accommodate the largest spool size that you will be supplied. |
| 02:49 | The DR25 heat shrink we're going to use to sheath our harness will be supplied on large cardboard reels when its ordered in these larger quantities. |
| 02:57 | And this makes storage much easier than when it supplied in individual lengths. |
| 03:02 | Cuts around the periphery of the cardboard spool will keep the tension on the spool, preventing the DR25 from unrolling. |
| 03:09 | Above all else you need to ensure that your workspace is clean. |
| 03:13 | The aim of our professional motorsport wiring harness construction techniques, is to ensure the harness is free and will remain free from contamination that might affect its function. |
| 03:23 | This begins with having a clean and tidy work space. |
