reusable cable ties

thingiverse

This is a pretty simple design I made, I was trying to organize my desks cables and I couldn't find a any zip ties or Velcro cable ties, I was also bored so this was created. These are as economical as zip ties while being as reusable as Velcro ties and offer a wide varieties of ways to lock them and can be easily cut as well and if you don't want them to look pretty they can be printed in as little as 10 min with a .4m nozzle costing only 2.5 cents to make MATERIAL The basic principle just banks on the tension between the 2 slots, because of this their are a great many variables that come into play on how well this with work with your material. For the ones shown above I used matter hackers High speed TPU, (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BC7X8HQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) which has a shore hardness of 95. This was the only TPU I had on hand at the time so feel free to try other materials especially something slightly stiffer say a shore harness of 97, as I think that would be the sweet spot. I believe pla may be able to work with some modifications and with a higher bend radius, but i am not sure. nylon may even work but like I said I do not have any on hand at the moment. Print settings I printed with a .4 mm nozzle at .1mm layer height, following my filaments guide lines for nozzle and bed temp, I did however have some trouble with bed adhesion but that was solved with a layer of painters/masking tape. Post processing With the filament and settings I had for my TPU I did have to do some postprocessing that consisted of clipping strings and clearing a some of the slot holes. I am confident however that with dialed in material settings and dry filament (mine was a little moist) you could get perfect prints right off the bed. Strength while I couldn't think of a super scientific and reliable way to test the holding strength of the cable ties, I can say however that they were quite sufficient for my needs and that I had no trouble cable managing even the super thick and stiff mains power cables. It is also important to note that these tighten under load so they hold better than you might think when you first get them off the plate. Edit: I was able to successfully hold a 1kg apparatus with the simplest locking method and by applying a more complex method of locking I was able to hold roughly 2.5 Kg or 5Ib with a force in the downward direction, (I do acknowledge that the testing was not super scientific as the direction of the force very much matters with the locking method used. so this is purely to give you an idea of the strength) I also tried to use a small set of pliers and employing the more complex locking method I found it very difficult to open the cable tie with the pliers in the middle. Disclaimer: these may lose strength as tpu isn't super spring and bends into place after a while and that may make it lose some of its strength. Reusability These are VERY reusable. This is why I like these so much, they offer the close to the same usability of zip ties while being far cheaper than Velcro cable ties. Each one of these only cost about 3 cents assuming the TPU price of 25 dollars per Kg as each one of these is about a gram ( I wish I had more accurate calculations but the most accurate scale I had was only accurate to the gram :/ . ) suffice it to say that these are even cheaper than some ties (though admittedly they do not have the same locking strength) Ease of use These are very easy to use, a middle ground be tween zip and Velcro cable ties. they do however bend over time so if you take them out they will be weird looking, this can be solved with a little steam or an iron. I added the scad file bc I Know some people may want a custom length