Question Plastic Cable Clips / Cable Tidy

Plastic Cable Clip Milling

Software - Mach3
CNC Machine - STEPCRAFT 420
Spindle - Proxxon IBS/E
Cutter - 2 mm Single Flute Slot Drill
Passes - 13 @ 0.5 mm
Feed - 300 mm/min
Spindle Speed - 12000 rpm

Hi blanthegenius,

nice little accessories to keep the Cable mess away!

Did you cut piece by piece (like the video shows) or did you arranged i.e. 20+ on a drawing to cut them in one run?

Piece by piece,
I hadn't tried plastic before today. Turned out pretty good.

and cheers

I tend to do a row at a time with most of my projects and try to reduce the part from lifting up by having the clamps as close as possible.

Hello blanthegenius
Very beautiful and useful part.
Would you share this part with us?

Thanks and greetings

Rainer

Dreher wrote: Would you share this part with us?

Yes, But
PLEASE NOTE: I have extended the legs on the larger diameter slightly so that it grips better and Thanks.

Looks great! Much tidier than cable tie!

Rory wrote: Looks great! Much tidier than cable tie!

Cheers Rory.

blanthegenius wrote: I tend to do a row at a time with most of my projects and try to reduce the part from lifting up by having the clamps as close as possible.

clamping is very important. You would not have got the same quality of finish if not for the close clamping.

Spray glue/adhesive help - ideally a vacuum table can also do the trick.

Hi Rory,

Rory wrote: Spray glue/adhesive help ...

Could you recommend a Brand and give us a tip how do clean up afterwards the Workpiece and SC table?

3M photmount spray is good - we will open up a new topic referring to work holding.

If you use a piece of ply/MDF as your base layer - glue this to the SC table. Then glue your work-piece to the sacrificial layer.

if you would like to remove it - simply use some force and it will release form SV table - then use a degreased to remove the adhesive. This works well - we do it all the time.

Rory wrote: ... we will open up a new topic referring to work holding.

Nice idea - thanks for doing that!

Now for the German guys ....



Für die "nur" deutsch lesenden Forums Mitgliedern hier:

Rory empfiehlt Sprühkleber (3M Photomount) zum zusätzlichen arretieren / Befestigen / Niederhalten der Werkstücke (Ich persönlich denke das Sprühkleber einige Vorteile gegenüber Doppelseitigen Klebeband hat).
Reinigen kann man es dann nachher mit Haushalts Reiniger welche auch entfetten oder, wie das 3M Datenblatt aussagt, mit organischen Lösemitteln (Aceton, MEK).

3M™ Sprühkleber

Scotch-Weld ™ PhotoMount ™ Produktinformation

Just a quick note.

If anybody chooses to download and make the part, please can you take pictures and post them.

Thanks.

Worldhusky wrote:

Rory wrote: ... we will open up a new topic referring to work holding.

Nice idea - thanks for doing that!

Now for the German guys ....



Für die "nur" deutsch lesenden Forums Mitgliedern hier:

Rory empfiehlt Sprühkleber (3M Photomount) zum zusätzlichen arretieren / Befestigen / Niederhalten der Werkstücke (Ich persönlich denke das Sprühkleber einige Vorteile gegenüber Doppelseitigen Klebeband hat).
Reinigen kann man es dann nachher mit Haushalts Reiniger welche auch entfetten oder, wie das 3M Datenblatt aussagt, mit organischen Lösemitteln (Aceton, MEK).

3M™ Sprühkleber

Scotch-Weld ™ PhotoMount ™ Produktinformation

Double sided tape is the devil. It doesn't come off. Be careful degreasing timber with solvent. This doesn't work.

Only degrease the bed. Its best to sand / scrape the timber layer. If your good you can get just enough spray to hold - but not too much such that it leaves big chunks of glue.

blanthegenius wrote: If anybody chooses to download and make the part, please can you take pictures and post them.

Sure,but right now I'm not actually producing those parts - I'm just playing around to optimize a A4 Sheet with 128 cable clips.

Hi, I had a go at making your cable clip from 4mm white perspex. Please find attached a photo as requested. I have also attached a new version of the .dxf file which I have drawn. When I tried to setup the tool path on your dxf file I kept getting an error telling me that that path was impossible, I tried several times to setup a tool path (to be done with a 3mm end mill) and was going to give up on the job thinking it was something I was doing wrong but as a last resort I decided to have a closer look at the drawing in the dxf file. I found that the problem was at the ends of the clip arms, zooming in to that area of the drawing I found that just before the end radius of the arms there is a small zigzag in the outside profile of the clip. All four arms have the same error which is obviously too small to be machined. Hope this helps.

I have now made four of the clips and they fit and work just great. On the question of holding the work piece down I used strips of double sided tape on the perspex which worked well. Turpentine works well to remove the tape from the finished clips and has no effect on the perspex.

Nice work neil_paul,

Thanks for sharing.

I used a 2 mm cutter not 3 mm and it worked fine with the file i attached. But thanks for pointing this out for the larger size cutters and attaching the file too. Great stuff.

Thanks for sharing the idea and the file. I have built a few with 3mm plywood and a couple using some unknown kind of cheap plastic coming from an old kitchen 4.5mm cutting table.

For the plastic one I tested with two different settings, the last one with more passes and the finishing is of course nicer. I used a 2mm cutter running at 6k rpm (Proxxon ibs/e). I did not have appropriate tools handy for a final manual finishing step, thats why all look so rough. They serve very well for the purpose but I guess the wooden ones will not last a lot, they are too thin.

I have a Stepcraft 300, and my tool chain consist of Qcad, Cambam and Match3.

Greetings from Barcelona!

nice work. 6k is quite low for the proxxon. its better to keep the RPM up higher. more torque. Try to go not so deep in the cut, move the machine faster and keep the RPM higher.

but- if it works better - then it works better at these settings.