There's no such thing as a one-man tank

If you’re operating a 60-ton tank, reliable communication is vital. Troops on the ground must be able to coordinate manoeuvrers, share intelligence and maintain situational awareness at all times.

Land force soldiers mostly communicate over an encrypted radio network via headsets which are mounted in their helmets and connected to the network through a spiralized cable.

One of our customers – a major defence contractor specialising in military land vehicles and communication equipment – designed these headset harnesses, and although they were sufficient, they were expensive to manufacture and required many parts, making it difficult to make them 100% watertight. After hearing about these challenges, our dedicated team of engineers decided to improve the way these spiralized headset cables were made to solve these problems for our customer.

Tough environments, tougher standards

Being for defence applications, the new solution needed to be robust enough to maintain high-performance levels in extreme environments and be able to withstand a significant amount of daily wear and tear. Defence land vehicles also often venture into harsh terrain, such as deserts, so the cables also needed to be dustproof as well as watertight. Finally, the cable also had to be IP-68 compliant, which was doable with the original cable but difficult to achieve.

Drawing on years of experience in designing and manufacturing cables and harnesses for land force applications, our experts found a way to meet these tough requirements while solving customer pain points. 

New overmoulded connectors for a longer product lifespan

When it comes to connectors, less is always more. The original connector had many small parts, making it harder to secure high performance levels and a long operational lifespan. To combat this, our engineers used advanced techniques to create overmoulded connectors instead of mechanically sealed ones – greatly reducing the number of parts required to build the solution.

Connector parts showing old versus new design

On top the old design vs. below, the new design of the two connectors.

Fewer components leaves less room for error in the manufacturing process, improving solution quality and reducing the likelihood of product failures. The new overmoulded connectors were also quicker and easier to assemble, reducing production times and cost. Less parts also means there are less potential weak points, making the new solution fully watertight, dustproof, and able to withstand extreme temperatures.

After seeing the quality and performance improvements first-hand, our customer was delighted, and ordered the new spiralized assemblies for a major upcoming project.   

By taking the customer’s specific needs and challenges into account, our engineers managed to create the ideal solution for this application and successfully created long term value for their business. As was the case here, existing solutions can be functional but are not always guaranteed to offer optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

This harness is just one of the many tailor-made solutions we create at Habia. In fact, we create over 8,000 unique products every year. Contact us today to see how we can help you improve your cable and harness solutions.