Engineered Custom Assemblies
When the application doesn’t fit a standard platform — non-standard voltage classes, exotic dielectric environments, unusual geometries, legacy program replication — Caton designs the complete interconnect from the operating physics. Not adapted from catalog. Engineered as a system.
Who custom is for
Applications that don’t fit a standard platform
The 14, 16, 17, 19, and HV Wire platforms cover most common HV cable assembly applications. Custom work begins where those platforms end — where the operating physics, environment, or geometry takes the application outside the architectural envelope of any standard product.
Voltage
Non-standard voltage classes
Applications operating above standard platform ratings — up to 250 kV — or at voltage classes where standard insulation geometries no longer provide adequate margin. Field stress, insulation spacing, and corona suppression engineered specifically for the operating voltage.
Environment
Exotic dielectric environments
Cryogenic temperatures, ultra-high vacuum, high-radiation exposure, oil-immersed feedthroughs, high-altitude or near-vacuum operation. Insulation systems selected and qualified against the actual environment, not against catalog defaults.
Geometry
Unusual mechanical configurations
Right-angle terminations at high voltage, multi-port manifolds, integrated feedthrough geometries, application-specific bulkhead and panel interfaces. Mechanical integration designed alongside the electrical architecture, not retrofitted to it.
Legacy
Legacy program replication
Drop-in replacement assemblies for long-running programs where the original supplier is gone, the original drawings are incomplete, or the original materials are obsolete. Configuration recovered, validated, and locked for production continuity.
Clean-sheet
Ground-up new programs
Programs being designed from scratch where the high-voltage interconnect is a critical system element and the design team wants HV engineering input early — before connector geometry, panel layout, and cable routing are locked.
Hybrid
Application-specific hybrid systems
High-voltage circuits combined with signal, sensing, or coolant pathways in a single integrated interface. Electrical isolation, dielectric integrity, and mechanical reliability engineered as a complete system rather than assembled from independent components.
How a custom assembly gets engineered
The technical process
Custom work doesn’t start with a quote — it starts with the operating physics of the application. The earlier Caton is involved, the more design decisions can be made for electrical performance rather than worked around afterward.
01
Define
Application physics review
Voltage, current, duty cycle, operating environment, mechanical interface, and qualification path. We work directly with the customer’s design engineers to understand what the assembly has to do and what the system has to be protected from. The output is a written technical requirement — not a guess, not an assumption pulled from a catalog default.
02
Architect
Electrical architecture
Insulation system selection, field grading approach, termination geometry, conductor sizing, shielding strategy. At this stage the assembly exists as an electrical system specification, not a part drawing. Architecture decisions made here drive every downstream choice — getting them right is the single highest-leverage moment in a custom program.
03
Analyze
FEA when geometry or voltage demands it
Electric field modeling in Electro V10.2 for non-standard geometries, voltage classes where margin matters, and termination structures where field concentration drives the design. Analysis is used to evaluate architecture options before tooling — not to validate decisions already made.
04
Build
Prototype with production-intent materials and processes
Prototypes built in-house using the same materials, the same overmolding process, and the same workflow that will run in production. What we test in the prototype is what the customer receives in qualification units. This eliminates the most common source of qualification surprise — behavior that diverges between prototype and production.
05
Validate
Full in-house qualification testing
Corona, hi-pot, altitude (to 70,000 ft), thermal cycling — performed at Caton, against the operating envelope specified in step one. Customer-witnessed when required. Results documented and reviewed against the architecture assumptions, not just pass/fail.
06
Lock
Configuration lock for production
Materials, processes, suppliers, and inspection criteria locked under AS9100 configuration control. Risk-based thinking applied to every change request over the program life. The assembly behaves the same in unit 1, unit 100, and unit 10,000 — or the program never reaches unit 10,000.
Engineer to engineer
Customer engineering teams interact directly with Caton engineers throughout. There is no account manager translating between the design intent and the build. The team running the FEA is the team specifying the overmold process is the team in the test lab.
What custom looks like in practice
Two anonymized examples
Customer names and program details are not disclosed. The technical situations described are representative of work Caton has engineered for OEM customers.
Aerospace power system
High-altitude HV power feed with no qualified incumbent
The situation
An aerospace OEM needed a high-voltage power feed assembly for an airborne platform operating above 60,000 ft. Standard catalog assemblies were rated for altitude in principle but had never been qualified at the customer’s specific voltage class and pressure profile. The customer needed documented qualification, not a data-sheet claim.
Why it didn’t fit a standard
The combination of voltage, current, altitude profile, and mechanical envelope produced a corona inception margin that catalog architecture couldn’t guarantee. Field grading at altitude behaves differently than at sea level — reduced pressure shifts the inception threshold per Paschen’s law — and the geometry had to be designed for the operating envelope, not the test bench.
What Caton engineered
Modified insulation geometry with FEA validation in Electro V10.2, overmold structure optimized for altitude-specific field distribution, and a customer-witnessed qualification campaign covering corona, hi-pot, and thermal cycling at the platform’s altitude profile. Configuration locked under AS9100 for production.
Outcome described in generic terms. Customer, program, voltage class, and geometry details withheld.
Semiconductor inspection equipment
Custom corona-free interface at 40 kV DC
The situation
A semiconductor equipment manufacturer was developing a wafer inspection platform that required corona-free performance at 40 kV DC. The application demanded electrical stability that standard catalog assemblies couldn’t guarantee, and modification of an existing platform wouldn’t close the gap — the field grading, connector geometry, and cable architecture all had to be engineered specifically for the corona-free requirement at this voltage class.
Why it didn’t fit a standard
Corona-free operation at 40 kV is a system-level design problem, not a feature added to a connector. The customer needed a fully custom electrical interface, a custom high-voltage wire matched to that interface, and integration with a non-Caton receptacle on the equipment side. No standard platform — or modified variant of one — could deliver all three.
What Caton engineered
A custom male connector using Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) as the primary dielectric, paired with a custom in-house silicone rubber female connector engineered to mate with the customer’s existing receptacle geometry. Custom high-voltage wire developed alongside the connector interface to maintain the corona-free specification across the full assembly. Field grading, insulation system, and termination all engineered as a single system — not assembled from independently sourced components.
Outcome described in generic terms. Customer, program, geometry, and equipment platform details withheld.
Why Caton can engineer this work
What full technical ownership means in custom programs
Engineering a custom HV cable assembly requires more than design tools. It requires a single team that owns the electrical architecture, the manufacturing process, and the validation evidence — without handing the program across organizational boundaries that lose information at every transfer.
Focus
Exclusive high-voltage cable assembly focus since 1973
Caton does not also make low-voltage harnesses, RF assemblies, or industrial connectors. Every program in the building is HV. That depth shows up in custom work as fewer wrong assumptions — about insulation behavior, corona inception, termination geometry, and process control — than a generalist supplier brings to the same problem.
Manufacture
In-house overmolding
Overmold geometry is part of the electrical design at high voltage — it determines where corona initiates and whether the termination holds over life. Caton overmolds in-house because outsourced overmolding means outsourced design control. In custom programs where geometry is new, this is non-negotiable.
Analyze
FEA in Electro V10.2
Custom geometries don’t have empirical performance history to rely on. FEA allows us to evaluate field distribution before tooling — testing architecture options against the operating envelope and converging on a design that earns its margin, rather than discovering inadequate margin in qualification.
Validate
Full in-house HV test capability
Corona, hi-pot, altitude to 70,000 ft, thermal cycling. All performed where the assembly is built. When test results show something unexpected, the engineering team and the production team are in the same building, on the same day. Iteration speed in custom programs depends on this.
Control
AS9100, ISO 9001, ITAR, CMMC, AS5553
Custom design is only useful if the configuration holds in production. Caton runs custom programs under the same configuration control, risk-based thinking, and counterfeit prevention discipline that AS9100 requires — not as paperwork overhead, but as the mechanism that keeps assembly N+1000 behaving like assembly N.
Scale
Low-volume, high-mix execution model
Caton is not built for high-volume commodity production. The plant runs at low volume, high mix — the model that custom HV programs actually need. Engineering, manufacturing, and test are sized for variation, not for repetition. This is why programs with five qualification units and forty production units a year run cleanly here.
Custom work starts with a technical conversation, not a quote.
Tell us what the system has to do — voltage, current, environment, mechanical interface, qualification path. Our engineering team will tell you whether the application fits a modified standard, whether it’s genuinely custom, what the architecture options look like, and what an honest schedule is.