The world is wireless yet coiled cords are everywhere. Even in a wireless environment, power has to come from somewhere—and you cannot transmit power wirelessly because of issues with safety, control, and interference. Moreover, wireless transmissions of data are not truly secure in, for example, military, aviation, or medical environments where secure communications are life saving.

Advantages of Coiled Cords

Unlike many other cables and cords, coiled cords:

  • Are strong enough to stretch and contract without danger of breaking
  • Are flexible enough to support user mobility without restricting movement
  • Compress neatly into a compact space.

 

Where Coiled Cords Are Used

Here are six industries among many where you’ll find coiled cords:

  1. Medical equipment, including defibrillators, carts, and equipment packed into ambulances
  2. Transportation equipment, including marine power cords for boats
  3. Computers and robots
  4. Handheld equipment, including bar code readers and instrumentation and testing devices
  5. Communication equipment, including microphones and equipment for firefighters and the military
  6. Consumer devices, including lamps, appliances, and garage doors.

How to Specify a Coiled Cord

When you are specifying a coiled cord, you should provide both the retracted and the extended length. There are set ratios between those two lengths which are a matter of physics: pi (3.14159) times the coil diameter. So a single coil with an outside diameter of 5 inches retracted will expand to 15 inches extended. Since each cord has multiple coils, it’s easy to see how a coiled cord could extend over several yards.

Whitney Blake Can Help

With decades of experience creating both standard and custom coiled cords for multiple industries—and as the first commercial supplier of retractable coiled cords—Whitney Blake owns several unique patents for this technology. For example, our Fire-Tuff flexible cables and cords withstand temperatures of more than 500°F, and our Tuff-Seal provides moisture resistant connectors. Do you have an application that would benefit from our expertise in coiled cords? We look forward to hearing from you.