Parameterized cable chain by AKADAP

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

There seems to be a lot of cable chains on Thingiverse. Unfortunately most are only available in stl format. Many are not designed to be printed without support. Many that have design files have design files for tools I do not have. Many do not even specify the bend radius.
The primary purpose of a cable chain is to control the way a cable flexes to prevent the wire from suffering metal fatigue and breaking. To do this, it must limit the bend radius to a radius that is larger than the minimum radius allowed by the cable. If the data sheet for the cable does not specify the minimum bend radius, and how many cycles of bend to that radius it can handle, it is only designed to be put in position and left there, it should not be used in something like a robot arm that continuously flexes.
Anyway, it seems that designing a cable chain is the trendy thing to do, and I have a need for a cable chain, so I decided to design one myself.
My design goals:
1) Printable on a Taz 6 without any post print modification or cleanup.
2) adjustable channel width and height
3) adjustable minimum bend radius
4) no fasteners
5) no clips to hold the wires in the cable chain
6) no special end pieces. Any link can be fastened to something to act as an end piece.
The settings in the attached design files are intended to work with this cable:https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/3m/HF539-10/HF10G-5-ND/3911427
It is rated at 400000 cycles to a bend radius of 1/2".
I have set the radius to 1" in the design. The plastic cable chain parts will probably wear out before the cable does.
I printed this with a 0.2mm layer height in nGen plastic. This seems to work well. I accidentally printed some links with a 0.4mm layer hight, but they did not fit together well, or move easily.