Dane.Kouttron
[10.23.19] Lab Organzing: Pomona
Magclips
This
is a quick writeup on cable-organzing & lab sorting.
There's
a comical assortment of USB, Display and other cables that end up
either shoved in a bin, coiled up and left on top of something or some
combination of the two. I wanted a quick way to access them and
identify what I actually had. |
|
 |
| Some Project Background |
|
|
| As
you may have guessed this is a rainy day project. I had found a few
Pomona XXXX cable holders on ebay [link to model], but unfortunatley
they were geared toward probably fixed diameter extra large BNC cables.
Not terribly clear what was supposed to fit in these. |
|
|
| So
i hatched a plan, the pomonoa cable holders were fortunatley steel, so
a small in-line adapter that took the miscelaneous cable sizes and
converted them to pomona-rack spacing seemed like a reasonable plot. |
|
|
| Have
you seen these adorable little magnets on mcmaster? They are 1/8"
diameter and 1/8" tall. They are also remarkably reasonably priced. |
|
|
|
|
|
| So lets make some adapters |
|
|
| Quick
solidworks modeling happened. I wanted to make sure the plastic
adapters would sit in and not rotate so a small protrusion is added to
match the size of the pomona clips |
|
|
| I had a number of different
diameter usb cables so I opted for two discrete cutouts which seemed to
fit most of the cabling. Odd sized ones
would just get some hot glue treatment. |
|
|
| I
made a few printed adapters to test fit things, i got lucky and the
small magnets friction fit into place. I found that using a small pair
of plyers was enough force to perma-jam the magnets in place. Glad that
no glue ended up being required. |
 |
 |
| Now
that the test fit is complete, time to fire up the ancient makerbot to
make a few batches of cable adapters. |
 |
 |
| I
started with batches of 8, as historically long prints generally result
in some kind of mishap. Loosing 8 printouts isnt the end of the world,
loosing 36 would be kind of annoying. |
 |
 |
| Next
up, time to add some magnets. Two per adapter and I had purchased arond
50 tiny magnets total, so the first batch was 25 adapters. |
 |
 |
| Next
up, shove in some cables. I found that the "blue mini-usb cable" that
came with the cheap arduino clones fit really well in the large
position, while the thin micro-usb cables snapped fairly well into
place on the smaller position. The small magnets do a reasonable job
keeping things in place, but still are easy to remove. I chose to leave
the mating connector facing up |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Concluding Remarks:
If you
have questions or comments, ask below or send over an email.
Stay safe when working with electrons in aqueous /
semi-aqueous environments.
Also wear sunscreen, I'm not responsible for your newly aquired
winter-farmers
tan : ]
Dane.Kouttron
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Electrical & Electrical Power
631.978.1650
