The practice of standardizing the cable production drawings has spike the demand for DraftSight software.
Chapter 1 – Submarine Cable VS Internet Satellite
Internet data transfer technology has been developed way too fast – from 3G to 5G within a decade. The evolution of internet technology has created plenty of opportunities for cloud solutions, products, and services. But large data transferred using high-speed internet still relies on submarine cable under the seas, which indicates that, cable production or fabrication in manufacturing industry remains quite active this day. Even the future 6G technology, might still rely on submarine cable.
You might be thinking, “why not we start using satellite internet and finally get rid of cable connection?” Well, mainly because satellite internet is still expensive today, and the data capacity per transfer is low compared to submarine cable. Because there are more cons than pro in using internet satellite, the submarine cable application is still being heavily used today.
The two main types of submarine cables have been used nowadays – which are power cable and internet optics fiber cable. Due to deep sea conditions, the cable is designed to be able to sustain high under water pressure, thick and tough enough to protect this cable under the seas. The cable usually consists of multiple layers of gel and materials to ensure the core in the cable is protected under extreme situation in the seas, and be able to reduce or absorb heat from the core based on the cable application.
Satellite is good, but operation cost is expensive, unable to support large data transfer from different locations
Example of power cable used to supply power across different countries
The optics fiber under the sea protected with different materials, to ensure it works properly under the seas
Chapter 2 – DraftSight Steps In
Mass production of submarine cables has been a crucial to the industry, due to high demand of high-speed internet, supplying power, and high data transfer to the cloud server. As the number of users is increasing, the usage of submarine cables increased as well.
To produce submarine cables up to the specific specification, the positions, materials and production process must be precise with 0 errors. QC checking process is extremely strict to ensure each cable is produced in the same standard, no defect should be found in the product. Imagine if there is a cable loose within the cable, it will cause catastrophic event under the seas. Not only does it affect the global internet stability, it may even lead to black-out for the whole country.
Thus, to have a standard cable fabrication drawing, drafters will be required to use the standard tool to do cross-section drawings, hand drawings are no longer recognized in manufacturing industry, to ensure absolute 0 human error be found in this drawing details. This is where DraftSight comes in to provide the features for drafters to do their job.
DraftSight is well known as a recommended tool for drafting and producing drawings in manufacturing industry. The basic features, such as layers, lines, circular pattern drafting features are sufficient for normal cross-section drawing, paired with the UI that allows users to easily pick up and implement DraftSight in no time. The output file in DWG/DXF format, general file format, not only for fabricator, but also suitable for machine to fully automate producing and assembling the submarine cable.
Standardized drawing required for checking, consistent quality from different fabrication factory
The extruded submarine cable, come with dozens of rolls, installation at the boat and let it sink in the seas
Chapter 3 – Stardard Design
To meet the high demand of submarine or underseas power cables, simplified and standardized drawing is required for production or fabrication, and QC checking before delivering the cables for the end users.
For production of submarine cables, our focus is to speed up the production process. As we know that, at the end of the day the cable will just lie on the seabed or floating in the deep sea, it is unlikely that we are going to have the on-site assembly drawing; most crucial part will be the length of the submarine cables, the cross-section profile of the cables, the type of cable to be produced.
There is a standard regulation for submarine cables production that has been introduced around the world, to ensure all cables fabricator produced are using the same dimeter standard – the materials used in the extruding machine; profile used in the drawing profile; QC heavily depends on the profile shown in the drawing to ensure rest of the wire is in correct alignment in the submarine cable.
As long, the drawing able to categorise the materials, able to show the cable types, the profile, and rest of dimension information sometime depends on the standard extruding machine they used to produce the cables.
Layers Managers allow user to preset the color to differentiate the materials
Circular entities to create circular pattern
Utilizing the circular pattern to create duplicate pattern, to save more time drafting
Using hatch to create line to represent the area
Apply color to identify the materials layers
Create balloon for BOM table, if needed
Additional information can add on the drawing sheet for fabrication and QC checking
Conclusion
Interested to try out DraftSight? Drop us an email at chchai@cadcam.com.my. We are keen to show you more hidden features that DraftSight can provide, even can synchronizing files on cloud, so you can easily access all the files in the palm of your hand.
If you are from the cable industry, do reach out to us, we are happy to serve you as a local partner in this industry, and we can learn together and share our knowledge together.
Always remember, treat us like a friends or partners, we always welcome everyone to seek us for support or services in engineering field, or manufacturing industry.