Guide Part Design of a Tying Tool for a Wire Harness Considering Its Disassembly for String Extraction

A guide part of a tying tool to bind a wire harness is designed. Wire harnesses installed in an aircraft are bound with belt-like strings. The binding process, tying a clove hitch first and then a double overhand knot, is still performed by human workers. To promote the efficiency of the process, simplification of the process with some tools is more practical than automation by robots. First, we formulated the string shape based on the theory of surfaces. With this formulation, a hole in a guide is designed considering the disassembly direction of the guide. Furthermore, the guide is designed so that the string can be extracted with minimum disassembly. Finally, we prototyped the guide with a 3D printer. We could tie the knots with this guide.