How to protect cables
Is cable management important? Whether you’re dealing with industrial generator parts or your data centre server cabinet, you need robust protection for cables. In this guide, we’ll outline the factors you need to consider and the role of different solutions. This will help you ensure that your cable management installation is an asset for years to come. Here, we’ll cover:
Why is cable protection so important?
Know your capacity
Avoid over tightening cables
Understanding cable bend radius
Protecting your pass-through
Cable management solutions and components
Why is cable protection so important?
Protecting cables is crucial for several reasons. Understanding its importance and what you need to know about it can help ensure the safety, reliability, and longevity of electrical and data transmission systems. Here are some key points to consider for cable management:
Safety
Safe cables are essential to preventing accidents and hazards. Exposed or damaged cables can pose electrical shock risks, fire hazards, and potential injury to people who may come into contact with your cables. The protection of cables helps mitigate these risks.
Reliability
Cables are the backbone of many critical systems, such as electrical power distribution, telecommunications, and data networks. Failure to protect cables adequately can lead to damage from environmental factors (e.g., moisture, heat, cold), physical stress, and accidental impacts. This can result in disruptions, downtime, and costly repairs or replacements.
Longevity
Well protected cabling tends to have a longer lifespan. Exposure to harsh environmental conditions, chemicals, UV radiation, and physical abuse can degrade cables over time. Proper cable protection measures can extend their operational life, reducing maintenance and replacement costs.
Data Integrity
In data transmission systems, the integrity of the signals carried by cables is paramount. It’s important to prevent cable damage with proper protection. You want to avoid electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI), which can corrupt data signals and lead to errors, reduced performance, and data loss. Shielding and proper cable routing can mitigate these issues.
Cable Identification
Proper cable management can also include labelling and documentation. Clear labelling ensures that cables can be easily identified for maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair purposes. Colour also plays a role in identification, such as red and blue cables. A red cable signifies a live switch wire, while blue typically indicates a neutral wire.
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Know your capacity
To ensure effective cable management, you should be aware of the types of cables used, environmental conditions, routing considerations, protection methods, regulations, and the importance of ongoing maintenance.
What should you ensure cables do not do?
It’s crucial that you never overfill cable management devices, such as cable trays. These are mechanical protection for cables in walls.
● Doing so runs the risk of cable damage, insulation damage, and crosstalk. More seriously if you’re managing power cables, you risk cables and wires overheating and a potential fire. How to stop wires overheating includes maintaining proper ventilation, which overfilling cable devices prevents.
● To prevent cables from tangling, always use the correct length. Using too much will only create cable spaghetti. This is a cabling mess that creates air dams, which in turn damages your cables.
Avoid over tightening cables
From heavy duty cable ties to mounting cable ties and everything in between, including push mount cable ties and stainless steel cable ties: they’re all an effective way to organise and secure cables.
● Be careful to not tighten your ties too much.
● Doing so can risk damage to the cable insulation, which presents a safety risk.
● Too-tight cable ties can stop signals from travelling properly through the cables.
● This affects performance and the efficacy of your devices and machinery.
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Understanding cable bend radius
Cable bend protection is critical. Every cable has a bend radius beyond which it begins to lose signal. When it comes to machinery, such as HVAC system components and network cables, and what you’ll find in a rack mount cabinet, this can have significant implications for your business and productivity.
● Prolonged exposure to over-bending can cause permanent damage to your cables.
● This can result in the need for regular repairs and replacement, which has both financial and operational ramifications.
● Cables need sufficient space – to ensure safe wires & cables, don’t over exceed the bend radius by over packing.
Our experts explain what bend radius is in our guide, Fibre optics FAQs: the Advantages, Bend Radius Explained and More.
Protecting your pass-through
Occasionally you will need to create holes in furniture, server containers or other items to allow cables to pass through. When passing cables through plastic, wood or metal, it’s important that you use grommets. These holes often have rough edges that can damage the cable insulation, or even sever the cable itself. You can protect wires and cable as it passes through this hole with a grommet.
Cable management solutions and components
Cable management is absolutely essential to preventing problems. Below are types of cable protection that you should consider.
We recommend:
Purpose: Holds small bundles of wires or cables together to keep them organised.
Our range includes standard, heat-stabilised, and mounting cable ties. Materials range from coloured nylon to stainless steel.
Learn more in our Guide to Cable Ties.
Purpose: Provides cable and wiring protection from sharp panel edges.
Explore our ranges of rubber and plastic grommets. From IP67 sealing grommets to high-heat resistant grommets, our ranges are used in industries that include data centres, telecom and automotive industries and manufacturing facilities.
Find out more in our Guide to Rubber Grommets.
Purpose: Insulates, protects and binds cables together, creating a protective layer that fits the equipment’s contours – also used to repair damaged cable insulation
Our range of thermoplastic tubes shrinks when exposed to heat. Available with or without adhesive lining and in different colours for easy identification.
Learn more in our Brief Guide to Heat Shrink Tubing.
Purpose: Secure wires and long runs of cables to fixed surfaces – also ideal for cable safety. Cable clips help keep cables tidy to minimise risks such as trip hazards from any potential loose or trailing wires.
Types and styles in our range include adjustable cable clips, wire clips, spring clips and more. Choose from various mounting options to support your project requirements, such as screw mount/screw-in, snap on and self-adhesive.
Purpose: Protect cable from wear without restricting flexibility.
Crush resistant, flexible, and lightweight, our spiral cable wraps come in natural or black polyethylene. Easy to install.
Find out more in our guide, How to Install Cable Wrap.
Purpose: Defines the routing path of cable installations and are designed to ensure the retention and support to cables, while restricting movement.
Our vast range includes adjustable cable clamps, plastic cable clamps, wire clamps, screw mount cable clamps, adhesive cable clips and more.
Learn more in our guide, What is a Cable Clamp?
Purpose: Type of cable covers that provides robust protection against abrasion, mechanical damage, and environmental factors.
Our polyester braided cable sleeves can be cut with scissors and still maintain a frayless end. The woven construction enables a flexible and expandable design, allowing for easy installation and access to cables.
Find out more in A Guide to Braided Cable Sleeving.
Purpose: Provides electrical cable protection from physical damage, moisture, and environmental factors. Also helps to organise and route cables neatly, ensuring safety, reliability, and compliance with building codes and regulations.
Our highly flexible plastic conduit offers a high fatigue life. Its high impact strength aids its recovery when crushed. Typically used in general factory wiring and connections to machines, it’s also available in steel as heavy-duty cable protectors.
To learn more, check out our Guide to Conduit Size Charts.
Purpose: Secures and bundles together cables and wires by twisting the tie around them, providing simple and temporary fastening that can be easily adjusted and removed when needed.
Our twist ties are also available mounted for use on flat surfaces in limited spaces. For a secure mount on circuit boards, try our standoff twist ties for stabilising and protecting cables.
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Download free CADs and try before you buy
Free CADs are available, which you can download. You can also request free samples, which are available for most solutions, to ensure the dimensions you’ve chosen are exactly what you need. If you need help choosing your cable management, our experts are always happy to advise you.
Whatever your requirements, you can depend on fast despatch.
Questions?
Email us at sales@essentracomponents.co.uk or speak to one of our experts for further information on the ideal solution for your application 0345 528 0474.