Cable management is the business of routing and securing the wiring of a system so that it is reliable, diagnosable and safe: route it cleanly, gather it into harnesses, label the wires, and take the mechanical strain off the connectors.
In the project
Untidy wiring is a classic cause of intermittent faults (bad contacts, wires pulled off) and makes debugging painful. A few habits are worth having, above all during integration: route and bundle the harnesses, label both ends of every wire, provide strain relief on the connectors that take load, and leave a little service length. In the running example, clean wiring of the arm’s motors and limit switches keeps the movement from tearing a connection loose, and makes diagnosis easier when an axis stops responding.
See also
- Integration and testing — the phase where the wiring is made reliable
- PCB — the integrated alternative to flying leads
- Eco-design — demountable connectors and repairability