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Electrical connectors used in the automotive and aerospace architecture are exposed to the most different environmental conditions. In this harsh environmental the harness can be attacked and may loose contact resistance integrity. Consequently, a wide number of failures can occurs mainly in the terminal wire connections damaged by galvanic and oxidation corrosion. This kind of material's degradation may have great impact on financial and safety issues. The automotive current solution available is silicone cable seal placed in different connectors. This product fulfills all the protection requirements well at very low cost and for this reason it is widely spread. However, there is an automotive tendency of downsizing what could be a limitation. For this particular purpose an overview of the sealing barrier concept was the main proposal of this study, in order to promote alternative concepts which can assure contact resistance integrity and avoid corrosion.

Miniaturization is an important trend in many technology segments, once it can enable innovative applications generating new markets. This trend was begun in electronics industry after World War II and has spawned changes into automotive sector also. For Automotive Wiring Harness, miniaturization is clearly presented in most of the components, mainly because of its benefits like the potential of mass reduction, cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Furthermore the main voice of customer points to cable gauge reduction that represents a considerable challenge for connection manufacturing process due to quality control limitations presented by conventional crimp process for 0,35 [mm₂] cables and smaller. According to that, the scope of this article is to present, in details, a manufacturing process optimization for an alternative and more robust technology of joining copper stranded cables to tin brass terminals used on automotive wiring harness, Resistance Welding.