Aerospace applications

Braid applications are used in the design and manufacture of high specification electrical protection and interconnect systems, high current connectors and fluid transfer products for a wide range of applications in harsh and safety critical aircraft environments.

Such braid applications include:

Wiring harnesses in engines
Protection for harnesses in exposed areas – landing gear systems,wheel bays.
Shielding for EMC, EMP, RFI, HRIF and lightning strike on safety critical systems
Fluid transfer systems

Cobra also has braiding equipment involved in the manufacture of propellers from carbon fibre.

Typically such braid applications involve braiding wire or braiding textile materials such as tin plated copper, nickel-plated copper, nomex and PEEK. These include braid wire as listed under Federal Specification QQ-B-575C.
Cobra supplies both wire braiding machines and textile braiding machines to this market. One of the benefits of the Cobra braiding machine is the ability for short production runs to be handled efficiently and at low and economical cost.

The number of carrier options varies from 3 to 72 including flat braids. This variety leads to the maypole braiding machine being used in niche wire applications where a rotary braiding machine is not suitable.

The Cobra braiding machine can use a variety of industry standard bobbins that are sold in North America. This includes the Wardwell New England Butt #2 bobbin and paper or cardboard tube.

As well as providing machinery Cobra can offer technical consultancy particularly on the construction of a braid in relation to the braid’s end use.