Strain relief for cables in motion

thingiverse

These are two items for use with my Cable Dangler design. The Cable Dangler minimizes stress and bending on cables that connect to moving parts in a printer, but used alone could still concentrate repetitive bending at weak points like the connectors of RJ-45 cables. These strain reliefs mount on screws of a NEMA17 stepper motor, which must be slightly longer than the ones that come with the stepper. Likely places to use these are on motors for the X-axis and Extruder motors of an FT-5 printer. These provide a surface for fastening spiral-wrapped cables with nylon tie-wraps so that any bending is gentle and spread out over a length of the cable for long life. I used these with cabling in 8mm spiral wrap, available at Amazon.com. There are two versions: one launches a cable perpendicularly from the back of a NEMA17, while the other launches a cable parallel to the back of a NEMA17 and includes a mounting surface for an RJ45 breakout board if needed. The "NEMA17 cable strain relief and RJ45 stepper mount" is patterned after Hollywood096's "RJ45 Stepper Mount".