Get Your Wiring Harness Quoted From the Design, Not From a Drawing
Tomás is the hardware lead at a company that makes industrial air-quality monitors. The new monitor has two boards in one enclosure: a main board with the processor and the radio, and a sensor board at the air inlet. A short cable connects them. It has four wires: power, ground, and the two I2C lines.
In Flux, the boards took a few hours. The cable took two more weeks.
Somebody had to draw the cable again in a spreadsheet: which pin goes to which pin, which wire color is which signal, and which housing mates with the header on each board. Then somebody sent the drawing to three cable shops and waited. One shop showed a fixed price on its website that was not the real price. Another sent a quote three days later. When the first cables arrived, SDA and SCL were swapped, because the drawing no longer matched the schematic.
The design already had all of this information. The connectors, the pins, and the nets were in the project. Only the cable drawing was new, and the mistake was in the cable drawing.
Ask Flux what the cable costs
With Flux, Tomás asks the agent in the project chat:
"I need a cable to connect J1 to J2, about 200 mm long. What would 10 of them cost, and how long would they take to make?"
Flux does the rest:
- It reads the design. J1 and J2 are JST B4B-PH-K-S headers. On both boards, pin 1 is VBUS, pin 2 is GND, pin 3 is SDA, and pin 4 is SCL.
- It finds the parts of the cable. The mating housing for the header is the JST PHR-4. Flux looks up the wires that the manufacturer has in stock and picks 28 AWG UL 1007 wire.
- It builds the cable from the nets. It makes one wire for each net, from pin 1 to pin 1 through pin 4 to pin 4. Each signal gets its own color: red for VBUS, black for GND, green for SDA, and yellow for SCL.
- It gets a real quote. Flux sends the cable to MiniProto, a harness manufacturer in the USA, and shows the price that MiniProto returns.
The answer comes back in the same chat:
| Quantity | Price per cable | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $9.19 | $59.82 |
| 10 | $7.66 | $127.23 |
| 25 | $7.07 | $227.38 |
| 100 | $6.13 | $663.63 |
The totals include a one-time setup fee of $50.63. MiniProto makes the cables in 20 to 40 business days. Flux also says what it chose: the housing, the wire gauge, the colors, and the length. Tomás can change any of them.
Order in one step
Tomás replies:
"Looks good. I want to order 10 of them."
Flux gives him the checkout link for that exact cable. The connectors, the wire list, the colors, the length, and the quantity are already filled in. Tomás opens the link and pays on miniproto.com. A MiniProto engineer then reviews the cable before production. The link is valid for 7 days.
Flux asks for what it needs
The cable length is a mechanical decision. It depends on where the boards are in the enclosure and how the cable runs between them. When Tomás asks "How much would it cost to get a cable made that connects J1 and J2?" without a length, Flux asks:
"What cable length do you need between J1 and J2?"
Flux does not guess a value that changes the price and the fit.
Before and with Flux
| Before | With Flux | |
|---|---|---|
| Pinout | Drawn again in a spreadsheet | Read from the nets in the design |
| Mating housings | Looked up in datasheets | Found by Flux for each board connector |
| Wire gauge and colors | Picked by hand | Picked from the wires in stock, with one color for each signal |
| Price | Days of email, or a website price that is not the real price | A real price, price breaks, and lead time in the chat |
| Order | An order form and another copy of the drawing | A checkout link with the cable filled in |
One project for the whole device
In Flux, the AI agent designs the wiring harness for you. It lays out each cable between the boards and connectors in the 3D model of the device, and it fits the cables around all the other components in the enclosure. When the harness is done, Flux gets the quote for those exact cables.
A device is more than its boards. It is the boards, the enclosure, and the cables between them. Flux already gets quotes for the circuit boards and the mechanical parts of a device. Now the cables come from the same project, so the price of the whole device comes from one design.
Cables to ask Flux for
- "Quote 50 cables from J3 to J7, 300 mm long."
- "What does the power cable from J1 to the battery connector cost at 100, 500, and 1,000 pieces?"
- "Use 22 AWG for the power wires and 28 AWG for the signals, then quote 25 cables."
- "Make the ground wire black and the 24 V wire red, then get me a new quote."
- "The cable from J2 to J4 must be 450 mm now. Update the quote."
Try it
Open a project with two connectors that share nets. Ask Flux what a cable between them costs.
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Design Is the Easy Part. Flux Is Built for the Rest.
Let’s start building.
Let’s build your idea together. All you need to do is describe what you want to make, or what problem you want to solve. Flux will work with you to make it a reality.
