Simple hook: Lightning Cables

Lets get this first bit out of the way: I bought a 3D printer. Yes I know which year this is, go and have your fun.

This is nothing new or world moving but since I enjoy having this as a tool to solve my own dumb little problems I figured I share how I solved a particular one: I printed hooks for my lightning cables.

If you’re an iOS developer you’re probably like me used to having more lightning cables and development phones flying around than you should. I has always bugged me to a certain degree to have these scrambled all over my desk until I found a little hook by Tesa (the glue and sticky stuff company) made to hang things with Power Strips (I think they’re called Command Strips in the US). The idea worked out well, the hook simply wasn’t big enough though for the amount of cables. With my newly acquired Prusa i3 MK3S I was now able to print this little hook and stick it to the back of my iMac which works perfectly. The hooks are within reach of your hand but out of sight.

In the back there you can also see my Sennheiser PXC 550 which I still enjoy thoroughly but the simple hook was a bit too small for it. I pre-printed the hook scaled to 175% and it is an absolute monstrosity compared to the original print but it also allowed me to use more Power Stripes and also wont damage the padding on the headphones now. 3D printers are pretty damn cool, who would have known.

Here you can see the small version compared ot the 175% version of the hook with AirPods Pro for reference (we were out of bananas. This is the internet after all)

And here is the final picture with the headphones on it. You can see that they sit nice and even on the hook.

If you’d like to have one as well there are printing services out there but they seem to be pretty pricy. Otherwise I would recommend the Prusa printers. It’s a kit that you have to assemble and it takes a good bit of time (I did it in about 8 hours over two days) but I am confident that most people can set it up. Their new Prusa MINI is pretty damn cheap as well.

09.08.2020