I will finally throw in here.. I do not believe you will find any good books on the subject.
It is a bit of an art form.
There are several competing requirements for wire harness and so, every harness can be different depending on the balance of importance to each designer/job/situation.
If you have specific questions you will likely get more responses.
Have to agree with Keith, it is something highly dependent upon the intended application, and it really comes down to choice of connectors, and specification of the conductors.
I have never seen a published text specifically on harness design, but different industries have their own traditions and empirical ways of doing things.
It is all very much tied up with the overall design of the whole electrical system, because voltage drops, grounding, and stray mutual coupling, can all introduce serious problems and need to be understood.
My application is for off-road construction equipment. Our client(s) tend to retreat to historical company practices and it is often more costly to them and I find myself frustrated trying repeatedly to show them - in addition to what they specifically request - other options or techniques, but tough to sell them on trying anything new.
In asking you guys for any texts or journal articles, I was hoping to nab some outside the box ideas that I may not have thought of (really?) and that have proven themselves in off-road equipment. That way I would have a little better chance convincing them of new ways to save money.
Most notably, their current techniques do fine in serving Assembly cost / time reduction - but they're AWFUL for the poor sap in the field trying to service the equipment. No thought / little thought to that. As an engineer, I am also a former "wrench-turning" hydraulics technician so when I design something, I kind'a envision a cold night in Montana where the guy's on his back under the tractor in snow and bitching at the engineer jerk who designed this snaking electrical harness with P-clip tie-downs three inches out of his wrist-breaking reach - and I don't want to be that guy on his hate list.
Have to agree. I believe all equipment design engineers should spend some mandatory time working in the repair trenches before they are allowed to design any new equipment.
It is remarkable how little some well fed design engineers think about the poor stressed out maintenance guy. If it comes apart, it should only be possible to put it back together the correct way. If something can be plugged back into the wrong hole, one day it surely will be.
