As I went fast through the design process, there were many notes jotted down on sticky-notes, in my normal notebook, the backs of old printouts, in the OneNote pages, and any other place I had at hand when the idea struck me. Going back, I found these items spread throughout, telling me exactly what was wrong with tie-wraps, and exactly what needed to be right about these.
Hopefully you’re with me in agreeing that I’ve nailed it. (No mic-dropping; it hurts the mic)
In addition to “Cool AND Useful”, they have to…
- Fit over the tube easily and snugly, without fasteners and without tools
- Provide enough room to handle the cables people actually use
- Adding and removing cables should be easy, and not injure the part or cables
- Cables should be held in place firmly with very low chance of them coming out
- Changing cables should result in zero waste
- Changing cables should be fast and intuitive
- Changing cables should not free all the other cables in the bundle, from each other, nor from the tube
- If additional clamping force is needed, it should be a dynamic (springy) tension, not a static tightness, and the springy bits should be in direct contact with the tube
- The springy bits have to be readily available anywhere, and inexpensive
- There should be a Large-Capacity model that makes it possible to separate some cables into a “permanent” area so they won’t get tangled with the more-frequently changing cables
- It should be possible to “secure” the installation so it’s very difficult to get wires in or out
- It should come off the tube for moving, while still holding all the cables, as if they were an intact harness
- The design has to be strong “enough” to handle a “surprising” amount of cables
- No, really…it has to look really freakin’ cool! Not just okay, but COOL
That seemed about right. Can’t solve ALL the world’s problems in one cable clip! OTOH, would you really expect anything different from a guy who has is own, personal part-numbering and versioning system? Yeah, there’s always going to be a long list of “you can’t do that…” statements listed in the “oh yes I can!” column.