engine loom label maker

[spitfire4v8]

Thought this mightbe the best place to put this as many will have made an engine loom for fitting other ecus etc.

I've always made my own looms for my ecu installs in the workshop but now want to add small labels to the wiring for a more professional look etc

Thing is, when I search ebay etc for label making machines I don't get any results that will print labels small enough to go on automotive wiring. What machines are people using to make very small labels suitable for an automotive loom ?

any help appreciated, cheers.

[Sardonicus]

I use a Brother hand held machine with 7-8mm wide tape in various colours, also use one to make service date and mileage stamps that I leave under the bonnet for my own use 12mm wide

[stevieturbo]

I used a cheapie Dymo label machine. You can get heat shrink tube labels for this which you place over the wiring...and as the name implies, heat shrink them

And then do some clear heat shrink over that again, glued heat shrink if appropriate.

[stevieturbo]

eg, this one is a 7mm tube, decent size for most wiring for say 3-6 wires or so.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-36-x-D1-heat-shrink-t...

If you can get a printer that easily does 2 line printing that would be better still....mine was a basic one and just does single line text ( at least if it can do doubles...I never figured it out lol )

But still works perfectly fine for doing the wiring.

[anonymous-user]

I use this:



which prints directly onto heatshrink, and can do text "along", as well as "across" the tube, meaning it works on pretty much all sized wires.

Occasionally, for very small diameter, high wire count looms, (more likely to be Instrumentation looms rather than vehicle ones) i still use the push on individual wire tags like this, for id-ing individual wires, where the bundle is id'd with the heatshrink label

[Sardonicus]

Max_Torque said:

I use this:



which prints directly onto heatshrink, and can do text "along", as well as "across" the tube, meaning it works on pretty much all sized wires.

Occasionally, for very small diameter, high wire count looms, (more likely to be Instrumentation looms rather than vehicle ones) i still use the push on individual wire tags like this, for id-ing individual wires, where the bundle is id'd with the heatshrink label

I really like the lower ones purchased a job lot off AliExpress or similar made up of letters and numbers cost shirt buttons IIRC

[Penelope Stopit]

These are good, write 1,2,3,4 and so on
https://www.ebay.com/itm/4Pcs-UV-Light-Pen-Invisib...

The problem with tagging plugs is that tags give the impression that the maker/fitter doesn't know what they are doing

Edited by Penelope Stopit on Tuesday 16th January 15:01

[GreenV8S]

Semi-assembled looms I've received have had labels that are at ninety degrees to the axis of the wire to form a 'flag', rather than wrapped completely around the wire with the writing along the wire. That seems more practical when you are dealing with very small wire diameters and want the text big enough to read without a microscope.

[anonymous-user]

GreenV8S said:

Semi-assembled looms I've received have had labels that are at ninety degrees to the axis of the wire to form a 'flag', rather than wrapped completely around the wire with the writing along the wire. That seems more practical when you are dealing with very small wire diameters and want the text big enough to read without a microscope.

This works for a small number of wires, in a low density connector, but rapidly gets out of hand in something like this:




(i have no idea what type of looms the OP is actually needed to ID)

What most motorsport looms do is identify the loom spur, mainly to allow easy / quick re-assy after it's been removed for repair or fault finding, but not to individually label the wire in each spur, as that can be identified from the connector pinout ie

[Kccv23highliftcam]

tywrap labels, just needs a steady hand!!

[Kccv23highliftcam]

Max_Torque said:

This works for a small number of wires, in a low density connector, but rapidly gets out of hand in something like this:

I detest those insert markings that don't have the 10's circled.....

[spitfire4v8]

Thanks for all the replies. The dymo stuff looks great .. i only want to label each spur so this will do the trick nicely.
I had thought the brother machines only did clothing labels as they make sewing machines dont they?
Thanks all.