Cable management strip
Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 3:34 pm
Hey does anybody know if that black plastic used to run cables on the hd4, would also work on the hd3 ext?
That stuff is pretty common in the industrial machine tool world.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ca ... &FORM=IGRE
The only caution I would have is to make sure the track and the thing it sits on are lightweight. Any additional mass attached to the gantry can, theoretically, impact the speed or accuracy of movement along that axis (my X, maybe your Y).
It has been my experience that cable tracks work great when the cables are flexible, thin, and relatively few. In my case, the Z-axis carriage has the following cables: stepper-motor cable, spindle power, coolant in/out, under-spindle light power, static ground wire to spindle body, chip-blower air tube, fume extraction air tube, and a mister's air and water tubes. That bundle is something like 3" in diameter when you include the two air (blow and exhaust) paths. So, for me, I hang those cables from above the machine so the resulting weight on that flexy z-axis in minimized. Just another way to pelt a badger
Cheers!
Thom