MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
(OP)
Colleagues,
I'm looking for standards for rugged wiring. My gut feeling is that there are MIL and NEMA standard that cover that. If anyone knows part numbers for these standards, could you please post them?
Any suggestion, insight or reference is really appreciated!
Cheers,
- Nick
I'm looking for standards for rugged wiring. My gut feeling is that there are MIL and NEMA standard that cover that. If anyone knows part numbers for these standards, could you please post them?
Any suggestion, insight or reference is really appreciated!
Cheers,
- Nick





RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
The applicable standards vary with application, and also with the particular aspect of the harness design, build and installation it is that you're concerned with.
Here's an index: http://www.dscc.dla.mil/Programs/MilSpec/
What's your application?
RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
Best advice would be to hire a licensed electrician (assuming that you're not one yourself).
I don't think that you need to refer to any military specifications. Unless the shed is a military installation; in which case your generator installation services contract documents would run to 12,000 pages.
RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
Imagine that one needs to build a solid wire harness for an existing car engine from scratch. What's given is the working engine with ad-hoc rat's nest wiring.
What are the best practices? Clad wires? Build conduits? Are there types of insulation that make wires more vibration resistant? What temperatures to expect on wires? What hardware to use for securing the wires?
Of course, it would help to get a wire harness from a car, dissect it to see _how_ it was built. I'll do that. Standards, however, can help understand _why_ is was designed that way.
As you probably know, MIL were precursors of many non-military standards. Many medical device, automotive standards are based on 70s and 80s MIL standards. IPC standards have borrowed heavily from MIL standards, and later replaced them. The beauty of those old MIL standards is that they are good, often concise, often freely available.
Cheers,
- Nick
RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring
You need a wire type that has good vibration resistance, good heat resistance, and good resistance to oils and fuels.
E.g. MIL-W-22759 (for example). Typically PTFE insulation. MIL-W-* will bring up assorted mil wire specs. Once upon a time Kapton was popular, but it was later proven to have issues with carbon tracking and arc-flame propagation.
If you need to have a "mil" connector, and don't mind paying several hundred dollars each (not to mention the required crimp tools), then "38999" is the required keyword (see also PEI-Genesis). Obviously your existing generator isn't going to have such a connector already installed, but perhaps you're going to rewire.
Dressing wires such that they don't destroy themselves is more-or-less common sense. There are standards for various platforms (planes, subs, etc.), but they wouldn't add much value to a generator in a shed. Leave service loops.
E3 (EMI/EMC) is another potential issue. Shielded wires and correct grounding schemes if required (probably not).
RE: MIL and NEMA standards for rugged wiring