Wire Management Made Easy!
calfen14
Entry ID #: 5324
Created: Wed, Jan 10, 2018 8:46 AM
When building a robot the wheels, gears, and motors all fit perfectly and are secure in their position. All you have to do next is connect and manage the wires, but after dozens of zip ties they are always in the way sticking out and are usually damaged quickly. When you have to make repairs you end up cutting and replacing the zipties while hoping to not damage your wires. We use the wire clips now to keep them together and organized but we wanted something that would firmly keep them on our robot while providing flexibility to make repairs and changes while saving materials and keeping costs down. This is when we came up with the mounted wire clip, it clips on to the metal and doesn’t slip and slide around. It is easy, just put the wires in the clip and then put the hooks in the holes in the metal and it is that simple! We used the web based version of Tinkercad 3.7 to design our mounted wire clip and produced it on a Taz Mini 3D printer. We learned how to use the 3D printer to better a very useful product to solve a problem we were having. The 3D printer made it possible for us to create the clip quickly and start using it on our robot. We will use the 3D printer again to make more of our clips and we are starting to design some wire chase mounts. This software helped us to bring our ideas to life and to innovatively solve a problem by meeting our needs. I am undecided on my future plans, but 3D designing has helped me hone my problem solving skills and critically think through the design-build process.
