租屋的房租是一筆不小的開銷，再加上每月使用的電費，就算努力省電不吹冷氣，荷包卻還是在淌血……。你知道為什麼許多租屋的電費計算，都是以一個價錢（如一度5到6元）而不是以台電帳單來計算呢？也許你可能更納悶，明明有看到房東為每個房間裝設「獨立電表」，卻還是以非台電的價格來「算帳」呢？

今天租租通要帶你了解電費一度５元的由來，以及該如何尋找台電計費的房源？了解電費的計價方式，讓你尋找房源能有更明確的判斷標準！

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可養寵、可租補、台水台電計費等各種特色房源等你來搜尋

Expert maintenance support is essential to minimizing downtime and ensuring ongoing performance, especially in the power generation sector. At the forefront of this industry is Sulzer, an independent maintenance provider that has recently expanded its support network to include the Colton Service Center in Southern California, where experts in rewinding motors and generators keep wind turbines operational.

Repairs and upgrades are usually preferred to replacement when it comes to larger pieces of rotating equipment because they offer a cost-effective solution that improves reliability and efficiency.

Engineering improvement

Gary Patton, Colton Service Center Manager, explains: “We offer expertise in rewinds for motors and generators as well as having a full-service machine shop and specialist design and manufacturing facilities for motor control panels. The service center works with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to carry out inspections and warranty repairs as an approved supplier.”

This is exemplified by a recent intervention, where a 2’500 hp motor was manufactured with an inherent engineering flaw in the sealing mechanism that prevented oil ingress from the bearing cavity into the motor casing. On initial start-up, the customer found that most of the oil was immediately drained from the bearing cavity and deposited inside the motor casing. Engineers at Colton Service Center worked with the OEM to redesign, manufacture and install new seals, which have performed perfectly since.

Sulzer has a reputation for high quality workmanship and a fast turnaround for repairs. These qualities are essential when dealing with important infrastructure assets in the industrial and municipal sectors. Sulzer delivers the best possible solution for each situation by building relationships with customers and understanding their requirements.

Case study: Fast delivery using exchange parts

In a case where a motor-gearbox combination from a vinegar manufacturer had been badly damaged by the operating atmosphere, an urgent repair was required. Instead of a complete rewind, Sulzer needed to deliver a faster solution. It replaced the complete stator, refitted the end covers with new seals and bearings and returned the motor to the customer within 12 hours, instead of the two days for a stator rewind.

The Colton Service Center has also accumulated considerable expertise in the maintenance and repair of wind turbines, especially the generators. Capable of rewinding anything between 50 kW and 3 MW, Sulzer ensures that turbine equipment will continue to deliver reliable service for many years to come.

Gary continues: “Operators whose turbines are no longer covered by the OEM warranty need to be able to count on a maintenance partner that is capable of delivering high-quality repairs, quickly. We have the necessary expertise and facilities to repair and test both mechanical and the electrical equipment.”

Minimizing downtime

Furthermore, this expertise extends to motor control panels, which can be designed, manufactured, and installed by experienced engineers. Site engineers can also diagnose faults and repair them, keeping downtime to a minimum.

Gary concludes: “We offer a wide range of services that focus on the power generation, water and other major industrial sectors. Our aim is to find innovative solutions using the highest quality materials and to deliver the best possible service for our customers.”

Sulzer
www.sulzer.com

Time to read: 8 min

You know those hypnotic GoPro videos of skateboarders flying down flights of stairs as if they had wings, surfers gliding along massive waves, and James Stewart killing it out on the dirt? You can’t just get a GoPro camera and expect to get that kind of quality right out of the box. You need a stabilizer to smooth out all those knocks and bumps.

Because, let’s face it, none of us are born Steadicam operators. And the last time we checked, gravity is still alive and well on planet Earth, and it hits recorded video pretty hard when skateboards, surfboards, and motorbikes get into the mix.

Enter Aeon, the David to Steadicam’s Goliath. Lightweight, sleek, and incredibly easy to use, it’s barely out of its Indiegogo diapers and already reinvigorating an ancient industry.

A Timeless Name

The first thing you notice about Aetho, the company behind Aeon, is its name. It’s pronounced /’ay-THo/, and is derived from a Latin word that means “timeless.” When we asked co-founders Ian Nott and Harrison Lee about that, the passion that has been driving this young company bubbled over.

“When you think about great movies, great TV shows, they have this timeless element,’ says Harrison. “We’re not interested in the low-quality disposable content you see so much of out there. We want to give people the ability to create timeless quality.”

“We wanted people to have a relationship with their stabilizer,” adds Ian, “not for it to be just another gadget they have to carry around.”

Let’s peel back the curtain.

Rewind to the Beginning

Harrison first met Ian in March of 2014 when he was looking for a new startup to join. A friend introduced him to the head of innovation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where Ian was studying. The head of innovation immediately thought of Ian, the two met, and things ramped up pretty quickly from there. By July of that year, they had the company set up and hit the ground running.

“Before Harrison and I met,” says Ian, “I was tooling about with drones as a hobbyist, building them, crashing them, fixing them. I saw people coming up with new products and services in this space, and started exploring what I could work on. Then, seeing the gray area that the FAA was operating in and the potential liability concerns that came with that, I figured this is not the best move for a college kid with no money. But there was lots of innovation, lots of people helping each other in online forums figuring out how to put together various pieces of technology to get a stable video shot with a drone when it’s in the air bouncing around. That’s what got me thinking about the whole stabilization issue.”

Brushless gimbal stabilization (see below for deets on that) was starting to make a lot of waves around that time. “Most of the big productions use brushless gimbals now,” says Ian. “Before that, they used servos and gearing, and that made the motors slow to react. They had kind of a ‘step’ to them rather than a continuous smooth motion. Brushless changes the whole game.”

Fascinated with the potential of brushless gimbals, Ian put them not just on drones but also on handheld cameras, like the large SLR cameras, and that’s where he really saw a difference. “I was amazed,” he says. “So I went back to what brought me to school in the first place: Industrial Design. Harrison and I explored ways we could apply this new technology to an actual market.”

The pair eventually chose the world of GoPro. “We found the GoPro demographic to be young, lifestyle-oriented, very active, and for us the opportunity lay in selling affordable devices that cost less to produce to more people, rather than fewer high-priced systems to top professionals.”

“We realized we worked great together,” says Harrison. “Ian is all about design and engineering. My background is in marketing, mostly on the software side. I was looking for a startup that was either disruptive or could fill a void in the marketplace, and I felt this had both. It was the fact that we had the same vision but complementary strengths that really balanced us out.”

So What’s a Camera Gimbal?

A gimbal is a support mechanism that enables the rotation of an object about a single axis. It’s nothing new: Greek inventor Philo talked about it back in the two hundreds B.C. (yes, as in over two thousand years ago, except back then they used it for really cool ink pots rather than video). Three-axis gimbals used in stabilization systems for cameras allow the lens to maintain a relatively level position as the operator moves the camera, whether intentionally or not, for example when the operator walks or runs with the subject s/he’s recording.

The type of gimbal that Aeon uses is called the “brushless gimbal,” which balances the center weight—in this case a camera—on three centers of gravity with three separate brushless motors. A proprietary software sensor fixed to the camera reads the camera’s motion thousands of times a second and automatically corrects each movement by rotating the appropriate motor in the opposite direction.

“There’s no noise, no vibration, zero resistance, zero friction on each axis,” says Ian. “The camera itself appears to stay magically still but what’s really happening is all these minute corrections thousands of times a second so you don’t see it.”

Hybrid Stabilization: Mechanics Marry Software

The well-known Steadicam used on Hollywood movie sets for so long is a purely mechanical rig. Not a shred of code here. Traditionally, Steadicam operators had to be physically robust, to be able to carry the sheer weight of the device, and train for years to master those smooth dolly-like shots. For years, that was the best that non electronic stabilization systems could do.

All that work is being swept under the digital carpet. The size, complexity, and learning curve of the Steadicam, says Ian, present rather high barriers to entry (er, shot quality), as opposed to a system with dynamic intelligence that fuses hardware and software like Aeon. Beams Ian, “You can give it to a 5-year-old kid and get footage that rivals a professional with a Steadicam. It leapfrogs image stabilization technologies.”

UX, UX, UX

Everyone talks about UX but not everyone gets it right—and that’s true as much for the hardware world as it is for software. It takes a special blend of design, psychology, materials and functionality, for which there is no formula. It also doesn’t matter whether you’re designing something no one’s ever done before—admittedly a rare thing—or redesigning a technology two thousands years old. It just has to click.

Aeon certainly seems to be hitting all the right buttons. From performing arts students to pro skateboarders, users are discovering new worlds of possibility.

But what is it that’s so different about Aeon from the other stabilizers? With its compact, curved design, Aeon has a smaller footprint than just about any other camera gimbal on the market, and lets the user virtually become one with the camera.

“We gave ourselves an extra super-hard challenge,” says Ian, “because we wanted an amazing experience for the user.” He’s dead serious about the superlative adjectives. “You see those radiating curves Aeon has? Most camera stabilizers before this were basically ‘gimbal-on-a-stick.’ So we looked at the essence of what a gimbal is—it’s this orbital, rotational device. We said, ‘let’s play up that design, play on that rotational element.’ It has to have a perfect center of gravity, and the ergonomics have to work for anyone, of any shape and size.”

Combining all that was extremely difficult, the co-founders say. But instead of slapping the core gimbal technology onto a stick or handle the way most of their competitors do, Aetho connects the user to the technology through design. The radius on the outer handle, for example, is dictated by the inner radii of the gimbal mechanism itself.

“This approach,” says Ian, “has benefited the product not just visually, but functionally as well, because you feel much more connected to the camera and to the device.”

From Vision to Prototype to Product

To give you a sense of just how challenging it was to achieve the final version of Aeon, the Aetho team produced a little over 300 design revisions, over a span of about nine months. They did it one 3D-printed part at a time.

But even at the prototype stage, explains Harrison, they still needed to produce highly tailored parts to some very precise specifications, especially for the centers of gravity of the gimbal system.

The rough prototyping was done with desktop printers, and the major milestone iterations were done with SLA printers.

“SLA printing involves far more layers, which gives you a much more accurate result,” explains Ian. “It can put very complex parts into place, and you end up with a high-end visual model.”

The final product, the version users will take to the streets—and sand dunes and waves and the tops of glaciers—will be injection molded plastic.

“The device also needed to take a lot of abuse and breaking, so we produced 30 units of the final design, and our beta testers beat them to high hell and back. We got a ton of useful feedback this way, especially for all the final details before we locked things down.”

On the functionality and software side, says Ian, “we tested all kinds of different things. Other gimbals, for example, couldn’t track the ultra high speed moves of street skaters, so we tweaked the high speed traction abilities of the algorithms until we made that possible. Ultimately, we nailed a software configuration that worked really well. And that’s another important market differentiator—the ability to capture high-speed movement along an unpredictable path or direction.”

Stable Horizon

To reinvent a technology that’s been around for two thousand years is no mean feat, especially when you’re not the first one to try, by a long shot. The lesson to be learned from Aetho is that it takes nothing less than a rigorous commitment to prototyping and testing, and more prototyping and testing, to produce the kind of agility, user-centered design, and stabilization capability that Aeon offers.

While it still remains to be seen how well the young company will handle scaling to satisfy what they hope will be massive user demand, the initial signals that they’ve got a good chance at success are strong.

Philo the Greek would certainly have been proud.

A novel hot waxing treatment improves the aging resistance of wood surface under UV radiation and water.

To prevent the degradation of wood surfaces by ultraviolet radiation and liquid water, modified polyethylene wax and modified polyethylene wax/oxidised paraffin composite wax were used for the protection of wood surfaces with hot wax treatment. The effects of natural beeswax coating and modified synthetic wax coating on wood surface aging behavior were also studied.

Lasting hydrophobic protection effect

Results showed that changes in colour, gloss, water uptake, contact angle, micro-morphology, and chemical changes of wood treated with modified synthetic wax hot waxing were less than those of wood treated with natural beeswax hot waxing after long-term aging under ultraviolet (UV) light and water. Among them, the modified polyethylene wax/oxidised paraffin composite wax coating showed the best protective effects on the wood surface, and the composite wax coating reduced the UV penetration and enhanced the UV oxidative degradation resistance. In addition, the synergistic effect of modified polyethylene wax and oxidised paraffin further reduced the water uptake of wood during aging process.

According to the researchers, this data shows that the modified synthetic wax and composite wax coating can effectively inhibit the photooxidative degradation of wood surface, provide a lasting hydrophobic protection effect on wood, and show long-term photostability.

The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 161, December 2021.

Henkel is gradually converting its portfolio of assembly adhesives and joint sealants in Europe to recycled cartridges.

According to company information, the new packaging concept is based on up to 95% recycled plastic from post-consumer recyclate (PCR) and helps to significantly reduce the use of virgin plastic. Henkel launched the initiative with the relaunch of building adhesives in Central Europe in June 2022 and will gradually roll out the new packaging concept across other product groups throughout Europe by the end of 2024.

“An integral part of our strategy”

“Sustainability is an integral part of our strategy, and the new packaging concept for our portfolio of assembly adhesives and joint sealants is further strong evidence of the realisation of our ambitious packaging goals – without compromising on the performance of our products,” explains Baptiste Chieze, Director Marketing, Digital and E-Commerce for Consumer Adhesives at Henkel Adhesive Technologies.

We’re now quite deep into the 21st century. We are reaching a moment when advertising money spent online will surpass off-line. It is now obvious that to succeed in business a company needs a corporate website. As Bill Gates famously put it: “If your business is not on the internet, your business will be out of business”.

Every company has to have a website and indeed almost every company has one. The world, however, moves forward. It is not enough to just have a website anymore. The website has to be good, really good. In fact, it has to be great – really great. Here is why.

Your customers expect it

Depending on your market, even up to 90% of your clients will investigate your business online before deciding to buy from you. They will judge your business, at least to some extent by the website you present to them. This is often your biggest chance to win the customers over, but also a delicate moment in which you can lose them.

Your website gives your business credibility

“They seem like a good company. I visited their website and it looks professional” 
                                                                  – Every second customer on the web

The first impression your business makes is online. The first few seconds and the next few minutes of the first research of your website are creating an impression on your visitors. 

• Does this company look professional?
• How big is this company?
• Are they modern, organised and knowledgeable, or are they sloppy?
• Do they seem trustworthy?

Creating a good, professional website is not easy. It is often time-consuming and expensive. What differentiates great companies from the poor ones is that they have the resources, patience and the will to look after their websites. Customers feel that.

Each business is judged based on its website. If your website is poor, your customers will perceive your business as not that great either. If your competitors have good websites, it will be really difficult for you to compete online. If you have a great website though, you often have a head start against your competition even before the customer contacts you. 

Your website helps your customers

Your customers expect your website to help them. They will want to achieve their objectives using your website. Some of the things they might want to do:

• Find contact information – this is the first and most obvious reason people find business websites online. They want to get in touch.
• Find locations/opening hours – similar to above the website often serves as a guide for your visitors to find you. The more branches/locations you have the more important it is to make it easy for users to find those near them
• Learn about products, which we will cover later
• Get help – if they are in trouble with your products
• Other – depending on the type of business, customers may want to achieve various things (learn about their balance, download invoices, see the progress of services etc)

Whatever the goals, your visitors will expect to be able to achieve them online. The more you help them the better. Actually, the more the customers can do themselves, the less trouble they will cause you and your staff and the more willing they will be to interact with you.

But websites are not only build to satisfy your users. They also are very useful to the businesses. They make money.

The website is a great sales tool

Not only if you have e-commerce attached to it.

A website is one of the greatest assets your marketing and sales teams have at their disposal. It supplements all their off-line efforts. It allows you to do many things. 

Attracts new customers

Modern websites are fantastic lead generation mechanisms. With correctly organised content and SEO strategies, they can attract new potential customers and turn them to leads your sales teams can work with. 

Each business website should have clear metrics of:

• how many people visit it, 
• where do they come from
• what are they looking for
• how many of them reach out to the sales teams

Great websites employ complex lead nurturing mechanisms to convince visitors to the company and persuade them to leave contact details, which can later be handled by the marketing and sales teams.

Educates into buying

Buying processes these days are complex. Customers often go through learning phases before deciding to buy. The more complex the offer or product the more the client has to learn before he can decide what to buy.

Your website can serve as an invaluable resource to a potential client who does not yet know what he needs or if he needs. Through it, you can provide the customers with a massive amount of information which you would never be able to transfer to them over the phone or via a broadcasted advertisement. 

You could send them a book instead perhaps, but books are not interactive, not searchable, not sharable. It fairly is difficult to insert videos into paragraphs of text. Websites allow you to to do all that. 

Educational information has to, of course, be well served, not to overwhelm, but educating is the best way to turn reluctant or unsure prospects into leads. It is also the best way to clear any of your customers’ doubts.

Finally, great education on a business website of a company is organised in such a way that when the clients understand the whole problem he faces and knows how to solve it. He also knows that the particular companies offer solves it best. Your client is now educated into buying your products and he will not even consider other offers which do not fit into his perception of how he will solve his problem with the help of your product.

This, of course, it not easy, but it is worth the effort.

Presents your offer

This is probably one of the most important aspects of good websites. A corporate website presents your products/services. It is the best place to inform your clients about what you offer and present the offering to potential clients.

Your customers will come to your website to learn more about your products, to gain trust and to understand. On your website, you have the best possible opportunity to present your offer in the best way, without anyone interfering.

Websites help in recruitment

Finding talent can be sometimes difficult. Your website is an important tool for your recruitment efforts. The more professional your workforce the more they will evaluate your company using your website. They may look for a careers section but also for information on employee benefits etc. The bigger the company, the more the potential staff learn about it from the internet. 

Big companies often have separate careers sections or completely separate websites targeted towards potential future employees. 

Information centre for your staff

Company websites are really frequently visited by employees. The most obvious are the sales and marketing people who, if your website is well maintained, will be constantly educating themselves from it about the offering and value proposition and directing clients to it.

The less obvious ones are the support functions which check for legal information, contact details, tax numbers, branch addresses, job openings etc. Of course, you may have an intranet, but that also is a sort of a website right?

Websites are cost effective

Building and maintaining a great website is not cheap, but it is cost effective. A good website serves many purposes to many people. Achieving the same reach offline, providing all the information to all the users that visit your website via other channels would be extremely expensive, if at all possible.

The website is the only place in which you can have all the information you want available to your customers. It is the only way to provide them with easy access to all the things they might need.

You may have to focus a lot of effort on your website to make it great, but it will be an effort well directed and one that brings a lot of return. 

It is worth it to have a great website!
 

The LPJ-4SP,from Bussmann / Eaton,is High speed fuses.what we offer have competitive price in the global market,which are in original and new parts.If you would like to know more about the products or apply a lower price, please contact us through the “online chat” or send a quote to us!

• Specifications
• Package
• Payment
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• Contact US

Product Category :

High speed fuses

Manufacturer :

Bussmann / Eaton

Body Style :

Cartridge Fuses

Current Rating :

4 A

Fuse Size / Group :

Low-Peak

Fuse Type :

Time Delay / Slow Blow

Indicator Style :

Without Indicator

Interrupt Rating :

300 kA

Mounting Style :

Holder

Packaging :

Bulk

Product :

Class J Fuse

RoHS :

ROHS compliant

Series :

LPJ-SP

Termination Style :

Clip

Voltage Rating AC :

600 VAC

 DESCRIPTION

* Pre-order 30 days

* Matching skirt available, please click HERE

* Model: 161cm, 47kg, Size M

* Washing Instruction: Hand Wash or Dry Clean 

NOTE: These are asian sizes, which are smaller than western sizes. Please refer to the measurements below before placing the order.

About the designer: Ni-Meng Hanfu – 拟梦

Ni-Meng Hanfu is a Chinese modern hanfu designer. She graduated from Sichuan Design and Modeling Institute. In 2015, she launched her first collection on the Chinese retail platform Taobao, and soon became the most popular modern hanfu designer in China. She uses new tech fabric and created many unique modern hanfu pieces. Her designs could be wore daily, we are very excited to introduce her designs to the world.

Please check HERE for more of her designs. 

Bone conduction technology has revolutionized the way we listen to music and take phone calls, especially for those with hearing loss or ear sensitivities. Bone conduction headphones transmit sound waves through the cheekbones to the inner ear, bypassing the outer and middle ear, which makes it a safer and more comfortable alternative to traditional headphones.

However, to ensure optimal performance and prevent any potential damage to your hearing, it’s essential to use bone conduction headphones correctly. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the steps to use bone conduction headphones safely and effectively.

Step by Step Guide: How to Use Bone Conduction Headphones?

Step 1: Familiarize Yourself with the Headphone Design

Bone conduction headphones come in various designs, but most of them feature a wraparound band that sits on your cheekbones just above the ears. The band is usually made of lightweight and durable materials like titanium or plastic, ensuring comfort and stability during use. Take some time to inspect your headphone’s design and understand how it works before putting it on.

Step 2: Adjust the Headphone Fit

Proper fit is crucial for optimal sound quality and comfort when using bone conduction headphones. Start by adjusting the headband according to your head size, ensuring that it sits snugly on your cheekbones without applying excessive pressure. The headphones should be tight enough to stay in place during movement, but not too tight to cause discomfort or pain. Experiment with the fit until you find the perfect balance.

Step 3: Charge the Headphones

Most bone conduction headphones come with a rechargeable battery, so it’s essential to charge them before use. Connect the headphones to a power source using the provided charging cable and wait until the battery indicator shows a full charge. While charging, avoid using the headphones, as it may damage the battery or the device itself.

Step 4: Turn on the Headphones and Connect to a Device

Once fully charged, turn on your bone conduction headphones by pressing the power button located on the device. Then, connect the headphones to your smartphone, tablet, or any other Bluetooth-enabled device by searching for the headphone’s name on your device’s Bluetooth settings and selecting it. Some headphones may require you to enter a pairing code, which can usually be found in the user manual.

For video guidance, you may check: How to Pair Bluetooth Device?

Step 5: Control Volume and Playback

Most bone conduction headphones come with built-in controls that allow you to manage volume, playback, and even answer phone calls without touching your connected device. Familiarize yourself with the control buttons on your headphone and use them accordingly. Remember to keep the volume at a safe and comfortable level to avoid any hearing damage.

Step 6: Position the Headphones Correctly

When wearing bone conduction headphones, it’s crucial to position them correctly to ensure optimal sound quality and prevent any discomfort. Place the headphones on your cheekbones just above your ears, ensuring that the part that transmits sound waves through your bones is in direct contact with your skin. This allows for efficient transmission of sound waves and prevents the headphones from slipping or falling off during movement.

Step 7: Use in Moderation

While bone conduction headphones are safer and more comfortable than traditional headphones, it’s still essential to use them in moderation. Extended use at high volumes may cause hearing fatigue or discomfort, so it’s advisable to take breaks in between uses and limit usage time per day. Additionally, avoid using bone conduction headphones in noisy environments, as it may override the sound and cause distortion or discomfort.

Conclusion

In a word, bone conduction headphones offer a safer and more comfortable alternative to traditional headphones, providing an exceptional listening experience without compromising your hearing health. However, to ensure optimal performance and prevent any potential damage, it’s essential to use them correctly. By following these simple steps and practicing moderation, you can enjoy the benefits of bone conduction technology without any hassle or discomfort.

Time to read: 8 min

A robot performing parkour was impossible 30 years ago, but now, Boston Dynamic’s Atlas robot can traverse an obstacle course gracefully and precisely. Boston Dynamics uses Atlas as an exercise to unlock the next generation of mobility, perception, and athletic intelligence in robotics.

The Atlas robot is constructed of a beautiful combination of 3D-printed titanium and aluminum parts, but its technological advancements and operation would not be possible without the wire guides threaded through its enclosure design. Even more impressive is the amount of force these wire guides can withstand on a repeated basis.

After facing wiring challenges in my most recent case design, all I can think when I see under Atlas’ shell is, “How does it not crimp wires every time it moves?” Usually a lot of attention is paid to a shell’s external aesthetics, with careful planning of every detail, but wire guides get thrown in at the last minute.

On the inside, there are extensive supports for the electronics that are concerned with ribbing and strength and focus on the mechanics of the movement. Wire guides are often there to keep the mess of cabling out of the way, not to be a creative or beautiful part of most designs.

And that’s a workable approach, though many designs fail to even control the cables. Unruly wires can make it hard to close a case, prevent key components from mating (thereby ruining a good design-for-assembly), and interfere with the internal movement of gears and levers — causing unexpected (and embarrassing) failures in the process.

Clean wire routing and effective cable guides solves all of those problems and can also create beautiful design elements.

Why are Wire Guides Used?

You need to route the wires through the mechanics — that much is obvious. But how? What are the key concerns? The solutions start with examining the failures.

Wire Guides Keep Wires And Cables Away From Mechanical Components

First and foremost, good wire guides play a critical role in keeping electrical wires and data cables away from critical mechanical components — so that both electronics and mechanical components are protected. 

Complex robotic arms may move in all six degrees of freedom, and cutting-edge robots can even have twelve degrees of freedom through extending linear actuators and crown-gear rotors. And the wiring must pass through and around these joints with enough slack to achieve full freedom of movement.

Allowing sufficient slack at the right points means keeping distance short in others. If the mechanical assembly moves with the wire attached, said wire must be long enough to allow unrestricted movement. So, your design needs to account for that change.

Wire Guides Provide Strain Relief

This brings us to the second requirement: strain relief. As a mechanical joint moves, it’s easy for a wire threaded through it to be pulled, which will test the strength of the electrical connectors and may create sharp bends. Good wire guides allow slack around the joints, and ensure that any pulling force is borne by a strong mechanical piece rather than delicate soldered or crimped connections.

Especially with RoHS-compliant, lead-free solder, joints are brittle and can withstand only limited strain.

Of course, your design isn’t going to assemble itself (at least not without huge advancements in AI and robotics!), so you also need to consider the people putting your case together. That means considering the order in which components are assembled when designing wire guides. A good wire guide design will direct wires and cables away from joints and connectors and allow for easy assembly. 

If you’ve ever tried your hand at reassembling old electronics, you know how frustrating it can be reassembling components with stray wires poking every which way out of the case.

Wire Guides Create Aesthetically Pleasing Assemblies 

And aside from practical realities, wire guides add a certain ordered beauty to a project, like the subtle lines of a French formal garden. Steve Jobs was known for such details, having learned from his father at an early age that even hidden details are important. He carried that philosophy into each Apple product, and even had the signatures of the original Macintosh team engraved on every case. 

Beauty can seem like an esoteric requirement, but we’ve all experienced how much better everything works when elegance is a project goal.

Types of Wire Guides

There are many common ways to guide wires, but let’s start with the easiest: off the shelf cable guides.

Cable Guide Clips

Cable guide clips are easy to use and cheap, and will guide your wires and cables without causing any pinching. For many projects, these guides provide what you need in the case design and only require that you pay attention to the location of the boss for the screw inside the case. While functional, guide clips are not exactly beautiful, and the additional components add cost and time to assemble.

While you can design your own cable guide clips, options are probably already available for your specific application — so focusing on other design aspects is a better use of your time. 

Strain Relief Wire Guides

With many wire guides, strain relief is a major requirement, so it’s a good idea to include a strain-relieving wire guide as the first wire guide point after a connector. The most common strain-relief wire guide creates a double bend, pinching the wire between a post and a horseshoe to create slack at one end, even when there’s tension on the other.

The strain relief wire guide design requires a balance between: 

1. Not bending the wire too tightly, which can create its own strain, AND
2. Creating sufficient friction between the two parts to ensure that the wire won’t slip under tension

For repeated wire bending, you’ll need to limit the bend radius to at least eight times the wire thickness. A minimum bend radius of the wire diameter will generally be sufficient in a design where the wire will only be bent once.

The second critical design consideration is creating sufficient friction to keep the wire in position. Formulas are simple but always require complex interaction between materials — the rule is that the tighter the bends in the wire, the more force it can handle without slipping. Since this cuts directly against our first goal of minimizing strain, best practice is to use the minimum bend radius (one wire thickness) in your design where possible.

Pro-Tip: Round or chamfer all edges of your wire guides to prevent damage to wire and cable coatings during installation. 

A third component to consider in your design is the height of the strain relief wire guides. The limiting factor here is the height of your case or enclosure, but you want to maintain a height of at least 10-20% greater than the diameter of the wire you are ‘guiding’. 

Thermoplastic Secured Wire Guides

For situations in which the wires will or should be kept in place indefinitely and must stay secure, a heat-formed bond over the top of the wires provides a secure guide with minimal risk of the wire slipping out.

Just take care to ensure the guides will melt together without ruining the wires or wire coatings beneath. To accomplish this, you can add energy directors — areas of thin plastic that allow for faster melting. 

Also, compare the melting temperature of the thermoplastic you wish to use as a guide to the melting temperature of the coating surrounding the cable or wire you wish to secure. Make sure the variance between the two is big enough, then set your heat settings so you don’t melt the coating — it’s an excellent time to re-heat your frozen thermodynamics skills!

Snap-In Wire Guides

Ideally, assembly should be as easy as a snap of a finger (groan), and snap-in wire guides have the easiest assembly of any wire guides. No screws or other hardware, no heating, no careful bending, just push the wire through, and it remains fixed.

Snap-in guide design is simple, too. Snap-in guide design, particularly in the context of cantilever snap fit, is straightforward. A snap in this design is essentially a cantilever beam, where the desired deflection matches the depth of the snap. At this level of deflection, it’s important that the maximum strain does not exceed the plastic deformation limit of the material. These critical values can be determined using this simple formula:

Where:

• ∂_max is the depth of the snap, or maximum deflection
• ε_max is the maximum permissible strain for the material (less than 2% for ABS)
• l is the length of the beam from the base to the snap
• h is the thickness of the beam, and
• 0.67 is a constant for the rectangular geometry

So, that’s how you determine the length and height required for the maximum deflection — the maximum deflection for a wire (or bundle of wires) is based on enough depth to allow for the wire to pass through the two cantilevers (half for each, typically).

Clip Wire Guides

Similar to a snap-in design, clip wire guides securely hold wires out of the way of your mechanical components and allow for easy assembly. Even better, these designs are great for ribbon cables in designs that require large numbers of individual cables.

As with strain relief guides, your design should avoid creating crimps in the wire that could compromise mechanical integrity or electrical conductivity.

Zip Ties

The ultimate attachment multitool, the mighty zip tie, will probably join cockroaches and Twinkies as things that will outlast us all. Zip ties are a common solution that’s great for prototyping, but use them with caution. Though strong, zip ties can break if they contact sharp edges. And if the ends aren’t clipped properly, the pieces can jam in mechanical assemblies as easily as the wires they’re meant to guide. 

So, use zip ties as wire guides sparingly, and preferably only in prototypes.

Final Design Notes

While any of these methods are better than providing no wire guides at all, some work much better than others when the rubber meets the road, or when your case meets the mechanics. In considering the best type and location of wire guide to use, ask yourself these questions:

• Is there a way to keep the wires near the core components so the case pieces can come off without being attached by wires?
• What direct route can the wires and cables take through the assembly?
• What areas of the mechanical design will be especially likely to pinch cables and wires?
• Where can I save the assembler from needing tools to route the cables?
• How can I make the proper cable route obvious to the assembler?
• How can the cable routing add beauty to the machine?

Main Takeaways

Case design details like wire guides are often seen as inconsequential, hidden parts of grander projects, but the attention to such details is the essence of craftsmanship. It’s what separates designs that consistently function flawlessly from assembly to use from those that will have you fiddling with the screws to maneuver around stray wires for the life of the product.

Your boss may never allow you to add your signature into your design, but I certainly value being able to take pride in both its consistent, smooth function, and its beauty once the case comes off. If you need some help convincing the rest of your team of the importance of these details, tell them it’s what Steve Jobs would do.

If you are in need of custom wire guides for your next project, Fictiv is your ultimate CNC machining service, 3D printing, and injection molding partner. No matter what your production method, our experts will help you refine your designs so that your wiring is tucked neatly away and you get great results. 

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