EVolution EMC Cable Gland

The EMC shield contacting for high-voltage cables in electric vehicles is currently often given insufficient attention when it comes to safety and operating life. In addition to the shield’s current-carrying capacity, the sum of all operational stresses has a significant influence on the product’s operating life and thus on its functionality.

All too often, it is assumed that once a new vehicle meets its EMC requirements – particularly with regard to the components of the EMC shield contacting system – functionality will be maintained throughout its entire operating life and under all operating conditions. It is obvious that EMC testing is only mandatory for new vehicles. How the EMC values of the high-voltage on-board electrical system change over its operating life remains uncertain.

If a power component in the powertrain fails, this is immediately evident in the system as a malfunction. With EMC shield contacting, the situation is completely different.

In such cases, a vehicle’s operational safety is drastically compromised. The result is EMC interference emissions from damaged or destroyed shield contacting elements. These ‘sources of interference’ can cause EMC coupling at other points, such as control lines or electronic components, which act as ‘interference sinks’. The impact on control signals can be wide-ranging and poses a latent safety risk. In addition to the safety vulnerability, troubleshooting – i.e. locating the source of interference and the sink – usually involves enormous effort and costs in workshops. It is not uncommon for extensive changes to the EMC protection strategy to be required to rectify the issue. However, this affects not only the single vehicle exhibiting the symptoms of interference, but usually the entire fleet.

With EVolution EMC®, these unpredictable costs can be avoided. It is clearly more cost-effective to incorporate high-quality EMC cable feed-throughs right from the start of development, rather than carrying out time-consuming fault-finding and/or retrofitting expensive monitoring equipment.

When manufacturing individual components, vehicle parts, sub-assemblies and entire vehicles, process reliability is of the utmost importance. Ensuring this is closely linked to the shortage of skilled workers. It is therefore essential that greater attention be paid to the reliable fitting of an EMC cable gland during cable assembly, installation on the vehicle and any subsequent removal and reinstallation (servicing). These aspects were the absolute focus during the development of the EVolution EMC. The EMC contact system must be fitted to the cable using the AXI-PRESS tool in specified steps. This enables the fitter of the EVolution EMC to carry out these steps either semi-automatically or fully automatically. Final assembly on the vehicle has also been redesigned with safety in mind and significantly simplified. The benefits for vehicle and machinery manufacturers include enhanced process and operational safety, and, not least, lower installation costs.

1. Push the cable lug through
2. Insert the contact sleeve
3. Insert the sealing insert
4. Tighten the pressure nut until it stops