Manufacturing Capabilities

The Leigh Cables manufacturing facility is equipped with a planetary wire armouring line capable of applying armour to input diameters starting from just 5mm upwards. Wire armouring offers excellent mechanical protection essential for cables required to meet various International, European, British, and Industry Standards and Specifications. Typical specifications include BS 6724, EN 50288-7, PAS 5308 and Energy Networks Association specifications to name a few.

We offer SWA (Steel Wire Armour) in both stainless and the more commonly used galvanised steel. We engineer our armoured cables to precision, ensuring excellent armour coverage. Typically used armour wires include 0.87mm, 1.21mm, 1.54mm and 1.94mm nominal.

We also offer our armouring facility to process free issue cables, enhancing existing inventory with mechanical protection to requirement. Click here to find out more about our cable enhancement services.

We manufacture cables featuring wire braids to provide mechanical protection or electrical shielding. We operate a pool of braiders facilitating input cable diameters ranging from just 2mm to approximately 35mm. Our braiding is offered in various wire metals including tinned or plain annealed copper, galvanised or stainless steel and phosphor bronze.

Our typical wire diameters are 0.20mm and 0.30mm but other sizes can be offered. We can also process fibre braiding such as Vectran, subject to viability. Our braids are carefully designed to influence the flexibility, mechanical protection, and electrical screening properties of a cable. Our braids typically cover a minimum surface area of 85% unless specified otherwise by standards, specifications or customer requirement.

We also offer our braiding facility to process free issue cables, re-specifying existing inventory to customer requirement. Click here to find out more about our cable enhancement services.

At Leigh Cables we operate a dedicated planetary layup line as well as smaller dedicated twinning systems, both featuring in-line helical taping and drain wire insertion capabilities. This enables us to twist cores into a variety of configurations such as screened pairs or quads enhanced with water blocking tapes or additional fire or radiation barriers for example. We can combine many individual units into a final assembly with further collective screens or protective tapes before moving on to our extrusion lines. Our technical designers specify a precise configuration including lay lengths, unit positioning and fillings to influence flexibility and electrical characteristics, whilst our operators execute the plans in the factory to perfection, personally supervising each and every process to maintain our high standards.

We also specialise in composite cable designs where dissimilar cables are combined into one consolidated package. Our composite designs are optimally configured for flexibility, circularity or to minimise voids unfavourable in fire scenarios. Composite cables offer an economic and space saving multi-purpose cable solution. They are generally faster and more economic to install in buildings, towers and marine vessels and are often commissioned for robotic umbilical use. Composite engineering is also available as a service for clients wishing to free-issue the component cables.

Taping is an important process in cable construction and can greatly influence a cable’s electrical and fire performance characteristics. For example, we manufacture Fire Resistant cables to meet IEC 60331 standards, part of the manufacturing process usually involves the helical application of Mica Glass Tapes to act as a Fire Barrier. 

We work with tapes daily, including polyester tapes (sometimes refered to as Melinex™ and useful for binding or as a seperation layer between layers), Aluminium & Copper tapes (used as screening and applied to individual twisted components and/or collectively over all the components), Water Blocking Tapes, Semi Conductive Tapes (for higher voltage cables to aid in field current regulation), Mica Glass Tapes and Kapton Tapes for example.

Our manufacturing facility operates several extrusion lines producing core insulation and jacket sheathing in a comprehensive range of materials selected for their performance characteristics. These might include low and high temperature performance, flexibility, water resistance, oil and chemical resistance, toxicity, fire reaction and smoke emissions.

Our materials meet various International, British, European and Industry Standards & Specifications and are sourced from reputable manufacturers. We take great pride in our polymer sciences to ensure the right choice of material and processing techniques for the application.

Our typical insulation and sheathing grades include:

• LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene)
• MDPE (Medium Density Polyethylene)
• HDPE (High Density Polyethylene)
• XLPE (Crosslinked Polyethylene)
• Zyrad™ Modified XLPO (Electron Beam Irradiation Cross Linked Polymer)
• PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride)
• LSZH (Low Smoke Zero Halogen)
• XL-LSZH (Crosslinked Low Smoke Zero Halogen)
• Extruded EPR (Ethylene Propylene Rubber)
• Extruded TPV (Thermoplastic Vulcanisate)
• PUR (Polyurethane)
• TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer)
• Other material grades can be offered depending on viability.

We also offer our extrusion facility to process free issue cables, enhancing or re-specifying existing inventory to requirement. Click here to find out more about our cable enhancement and finishing services.

Leigh Cables is an ISO 9001 Certified designer of cables with a wealth of experience designing cables to various International, British, European and Industry Standards & Specifications. We also have expertise in designing bespoke cables from consultation stage, engineering the perfect cable for practically any environment or performance requirement.

Leigh Cables are the pioneers behind many custom cable designs used by world renowned technology companies today. We have bespoke commissions certified to CPR (Construction Products Regulations) System 1+ (Classes Cca and B2Ca) and System 3 (Classes Eca and Dca) deployed in the communications and big-data sectors, but we are equally as accessible to smaller enterprises as we are to the likes of energy network operators for example. Feel free to contact us to see how we can assist you with your project.