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The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

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Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#51
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban nylon ties and get the Velcro ones. They’re as fast as using nylon ties, are reusable, and are soft and wide enough to save the insulation.

https://www.velcro.com/legal-and-privacy/dontsayvelcro/

Velcro Velcro Velcro Velcro

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.velcro.com/legal-and-privacy/dontsayvelcro/

I was going to say "found the Velcro employee"-- excuse me, I meant "employee of the company Velcro BVBA"-- but surely a Velcro employee would know that Velcro BVBA makes Velcro-branded hook-and-loop-fastener cable management products.

I was just poking fun at Velcro's absurdity. I in no way endorse their view of their branding. I just saw someone say Velcro and I never have had an opportunity to share that lovely page. Seemed tangentially relevant.

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban nylon ties and get the Velcro ones. They’re as fast as using nylon ties, are reusable, and are soft and wide enough to save the insulation.

https://www.velcro.com/legal-and-privacy/dontsayvelcro/

I'm assuming my down votes are for the link being off-topic. Just wanted to apologize if I annoyed some people with it. I thought it would be fun to share it since Velcro doesn't come up very often in online discussions.

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#54

Our techs love to cinch down the zip ties as hard as they can, I've seen a lot of bruised insulation. Also, the fat end of the zip tie is annoying when you pull a harness through a wireway. Still, this seems way too laborious unless you're building some aerospace thing.

Cable lacing is also nice if you have custom PSU cables for your PC, so you can make your cable runs perfect.

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#55
post #45
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.velcro.com/legal-and-privacy/dontsayvelcro/

This is wild. It's perfectly logical what they're doing but I'm used to seeing this kinda thing after the trademark has lapsed (Kleenex, Xerox, etc). But to see a company release a pretty funny youtube video begging you to say their name less, well, it's just a weird thing to see.

I don't think trademarks can lapse in the US and many other countries (copyright can; which is a huge debate in an of itself: see Disney).

I actually use "tissue" and "copy", but those kinda make sense. Personally I hate it when people keep saying "I Googled..." because it reminds me of this bullshit search engine monoculture we have right now (I try to use DuckDuckGo more, but I miss the days of Yahoo, Lycos, Hotbot, Dogpile, Excite and how they all give you DIFFERENT results!)

Velcro though ... totally didn't even realize it was a brand until like just now .. and I'm still going to use it generically, because it should just be at this point. :-P

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#56
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely same reason as many, many other things: the modern 'automated' version (tie wraps usually) is easier, cheaper, faster. And has the standard consequences which unfortunately get ignored: requires close to no skill, plastic, seldom reusable, probably won't get recycled and ends up as waste eventually. Lacing has some of those disadvantages as well though.

Why is it a negative consequence that the replacement requires no skill? Turning on a light switch requires far less skill than trimming wicks for oil lamps, but I'd consider that a feature not a bug.

It's a bit double. On one side: yes it's obviously better, faster, if anyone can do it. On the other hand learning a skill is valueable as well.

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#57
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban nylon ties and get the Velcro ones. They’re as fast as using nylon ties, are reusable, and are soft and wide enough to save the insulation.

https://www.velcro.com/legal-and-privacy/dontsayvelcro/

This is genius.

If you don't enforce a trademark you can loose it. So this is probably helping protect their trademark.

And this also draws attention -- in a potentially viral way -- to their brand and the fact that velcro is distinct from and perhaps better than "hook and loop".

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certainly a time and place for it though still. Certainly in the aerospace industry, cable lacing is a very important part of the harness making process. When trying to be compliant to safety measures (like incredibly low or high temperature points, flammability, or vibration) heatshrink/conduit/tape often fails spec and the only alternative is good old fashioned wires and lacing.

Cable lacing is used in aerospace because it's lighter and they use such generous safety margins for preventing abrasion and securing wires that the issues with the cable cutting the insulation or abrasion that make loom the obvious choice are non-issues and aircraft, it's easier to inspect cables that are laces (vs ones in a loom) and spending a few grand to save a few pounds is justifiable in that context. Temperat…

Industrial use - zip ties inside a control cabinet are incredibly rare if you ignore the tiny zip ties used to fix cable name plates. Slotted cable ducts everywhere. Transition to outside world using control cable, bundling stuff is rare, if necessary, it'll be a wire loom, cables being loose in the loom, no zip ties. It's way more common in machines to have a cable duct go to an energy chain which fixes each cable individually in every segment.

Lacing looks cool but in 99 % of applications bundling cables is not just not necessary, but would be counterproductive.

Also PVC cable jackets especially for industrial cabling have come quite a long way since the 60s in terms of mechanical, chemical and UV resistance. The PVC sheath of an industrial cable is a couple cuts above the material used in the H03VV of the average desk lamp.

Re: The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

#60

Our techs love to cinch down the zip ties as hard as they can, I've seen a lot of bruised insulation. Also, the fat end of the zip tie is annoying when you pull a harness through a wireway. Still, this seems way too laborious unless you're building some aerospace thing.

Zip tie guns can help solve that problem- it's pretty easy to get about the right tension, and then lock it down to that. I use one, and haven't dinked a single cable since I got mine set up properly.

They're a bit expensive, but well worth it, especially if you're doing something that's likely to be near-permanent.

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