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The wire, cable, tubing, and accessories that the military uses in their equipment will need to withstand some very harsh environments – high temperatures, surface abrasion, foreign chemicals, tensile load, continuous flex, and more. Due to the severity and unpredictability of these conditions, all military cables need to be of the highest quality and must have passed the most stringent product testing.
To ensure these standards, the US government has issued a list of strict specifications that wire and cable are required to meet in order to be acceptable for various military uses. These specs are written as a letter/number series, such as MIL-DTL-17. In order to easily identify manufacturers who have been government-approved based on their compliance with these specifications, they have a created a federally-mandated list called the QPL, or Quality Products Listing. All manufacturers and products on this list will always meet government compliance for the specification they match.
In order to determine compliance, cables are subjected to strict testing. One common product test is the Military-Standard 810 Series (MIL-STD-810), which tests a cable's endurance under extreme environmental factors such as high and low temperatures, rain, salt fog, acceleration, and gunfire vibration. Another example of a common test is the UL VW-1 Flame Test, which ensures that a vertically-held wire will not burn for more than one minute after several direct flame applications.
The benefit of QPL Approval is that the purchaser can be confident that the product is suitable for use in military or federal applications without needing further documentation or testing. This way, a buyer can make a purchase knowing upfront that it will be acceptable rather than having to order a cable and then have it tested. In the case of wire and cable suppliers, seeing the QPL Approval stamp is proof that the product is of premium quality and therefore marketable to the military and other federal agencies.
While it's rare, a dishonest distributor may try to pass off a non-certified product as QPL Approved. If a QPL Approval is critical and the distributor is not a known quantity, there are ways to check compliance that are well worth the time. A legitimate distributor should be able to supply a certificate of compliance when asked. The distributor should also provide the name of the company that manufactured the wire as a source for more information. When researching a product's compliance, be sure to know its reel and lot numbers as well as any information provided on the label.
While there are good-quality, cheaper, non-certified wire and cable options available for consumer use, when performance and quality are crucial, as in military applications, QPL Approval is needed. It is the only way to know that the product will do its job properly in even the toughest and most adverse of conditions.
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Tim Flynn is the President of Allied Wire and Cable, a leading value-added distributor of electrical wire, cable, tubing, connectors, and accessories, headquartered in Collegeville, PA. Tim, a graduate of Drexel University, has been President of AWC for its entire 20+ years in business and has guided the rapid growth of the customer-focused, relationship-based company. For more about AWC, please visit: http://www.awcwire.com/.
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