Summary

Cable McClippy was created to assist with storage of my music-gear related cables - mic cables, midi cables, guitar leads etc. which are anything up to 20ft in length.

Anyone with an interest in copper-free cables or any audio cables you wish to keep in good condition know that knotting your cables isn't great practice. Good quality (expensive) audio cables treated with respect will last for years.

Whilst velcro ties are great for keeping cables coiled loosely I often wanted to hang them up within reach of equipment. Having just gotten into the 3D printing realm I managed to pull this together in Tinkercad.

Cable McClippy is my solution. The design is intended to be flexible but since I didn't have any flexible material to print with I wanted something that would work with ABS or PLA. The cord that is used to wrap the cable and hook back through the body has been designed to flex.

Both materials can be brittle when thin. Printing this in PLA with 50% infill/0.3mm produced strong and flexible enough results. Print time should be quick - less than half an hour.

The hook is easily strong enough to hold the weight of the cable. The cord is the tricky part. PLA will snap easily if you simply bend it at one point.

The trick, once printed (and do it whilst still warm if you can) is to gently bend the cord across the back of your finger just enough to make the curve necessary to twist and pass thru the hole in the body. This will avoid stress on any single points which will cause a breakage in PLA or ABS.

I found PLA more resistance to breakage than ABS though I'm not yet getting really good prints from the ABS material I have.

I would assume this would be better printed in a flexible material (if the hook isn't so flexible it won't hold the weight of the attached cable). Would love to hear how that works out as I haven't been able to test that yet.

I found it printed better and stronger laid out diagonally across the bed - I seem to get better adhesion between the shell and infill this way.

Anyways, hope this is useful to others.. and please share how it prints in other materials ;)