I’ve just received my za6 and it looks great so far. I noticed that it no longer comes with the cable management conduit and brackets attached to the robot. Support confirmed that’s no longer included and pointed me to Mac master car. In fact there are endless options and I was wondering if the folks here would have a recommendation on what I should get.
I plan to run signal cables such as USB and a handful of air/vacuum lines to the gripper. Any guidance or suggestions would be really appreciated!
Yep, we found that in practice that conduit was a real bear to work with and the plastic clips that held it on were prone to breakage when we released the conduit. We couldn’t find higher quality conduit hardware so we decided to simply remove it. We ended up using an arrangement that I hope to eventually turn into a product or include with the robot: magnetic zip tie anchors and braided cable sleeving.
The magnetic zig tie anchors are:
And braided cable organizer like this:
Alternate sleeved products are available from McMaster:
The end result is tidy and has a few advantages:
Easier to leave the harness with the end-of-arm tooling and swap it out when that tooling is swapped
Magnetic attachment means that if you extend the arm but failed to leave enough slack in your cable you don’t damage the cable, you simply pull a magnet off
Is less expensive and looks/works well
I’ll try to snap some photos later in the week and post them here.
I used the braided sleeping on the lathe to cover cords zip tie to the control arm. On my mi I kill I purchased 1.5 inch drag chain. Both options work very well.
Thanks for the suggestions folks! I really like the magnets! I’ll try them as well. I ordered some triflex light tubing and brackets from igus as I want more of an industrial look lol. I’ll post here when / if I get it installed.
BTW why are the last 2 bracket holders (j4 and j5) smaller than the others? May I suggest for next iteration to have them all the same size so the tubing can be the same all across? Thanks
