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Unpopular opinion: hand twisting safety wire on cannon plugs is a waste of my life
I used to sit there with my Milbar 25W twisting lockwire on every cannon plug by hand, and my wrists hated me after a 12 hour shift in the hangar at KSDL. Now I run the safety cable gun with the ferrule setup on almost everything behind the panel, and I can knock out a whole avionics bay in about 40 minutes instead of a full afternoon. Some of the old guys swear the cable is gonna fray and let go, but I have been running it on this King Air 350 for 8 months with zero issues and the inspection passes every time. The twisted wire still has its place on anything hot or high vibe, like exhaust and engine mounts, so I am not saying toss the pliers out the door. I just think we keep doing stuff by hand because that is how we were shown, not because it is better. Has anyone here had a cable clamp actually fail on them, or is that just hangar legend at this point?
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robin62826d ago
Man, I feel this in my soul. A buddy of mine swore by the cable gun on his Baron and ran it for two years, then one day a ferrule let go on a fuel pump plug mid flight and he had to divert to Grand Junction with a rough running engine. Turned out whoever installed it nicked the cable with the cutters and it rusted through, so it was more of an install error than the cable itself being bad. Long story short, the gun is fine if you are careful, but the old guys are not totally crazy either.
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