You might remember the old Apple MagSafe adaptor with the cute little fold out “wings” that served not only as a pragmatic cable management tool, but in our experience also expedited the inevitable and frayed end of your charger. Apple seems to have remedied the latter by opting for removable USB-C cables in latest designs, but the complete omission of a pop-out cable spooling contraption is problematic.
[Eric], an industrial designer, took it upon himself to design a 3D printed add on for the new generation of chargers. His video is certainty one of those satisfying accounts, where the whole process from conceptional sketch to a working Hack is neatly self-contained in a single video. The design is largely based off the original version, implemented in PLA together with piano wire serving as the hinge pin. We think this is a very good example of how 3D printers can be used to personalise and tweak commercial products to suite particular needs.
If you are looking for a more general 3D printed cable management tool, check out this geared cable winder we featured earlier.
I cannot count how many Apple Power supplies I’ve seen that have been ruined by people wrapping the cords around those crappy wings. It puts a huge 90degree strain on the cable right at the exit form the power supply…
Mine have never done this, but I’ve always been careful not to wrap them really tight.. They really weren’t all that bad.
Though the old “puck” style chargers had a much better winding mechanism.
Just to clarify: I would always leave a little loop at the top like the one in the picture above has too.. This worked fine. Obviously it’s bad to pull the cable sideways right at the start. But I think this is more of a user error than manufacturer, though the design does promote this in a way.
I think the answer to his question “why don’t Apple make this?” Is
Because wrapping your cables up like that in a regular basis destroys them. Spinning the cable around to wrap it in that fashion twists the internal conductors excessively and causes premature failire
PSU coozies, whatever next?
I broke the wings off one of my old power supplies, and printed a clip in replacement. The wings didn’t fold back, though, but I figured that was the weak point anyway, so was happy to leave that part out.
It was changed because the cable is now just a usb-c to usb-c cable and its better to just unplug it and wrap it around your hand.
This construction, as cool it is, has the problem that you can easily break the cable by bumping the top part into something (at least its now possible to buy just a new generic cable)
Simple reason this is a bad idea : cooling.
My original magsafe2 power supply gave up the ghost with a blown out MOSFET. I always put it up on two pencils or some such to allow airflow all around… Another 100 CHF down the fruity drain :(
“pop-out cable spooling contraption”
I read this as: “pop-out cable SPOONING contraption” and had to do a double-take.
Yeah, don’t let your cables spoon, it leads to other things, leave a couple of random cables in a box and by the time you get back to it again, there’s 3 dozen random cables you have no idea where they came from.
People say it’s bad for the cable to bend it like that, but the thing I don’t like is leaving the cable plugged into the brick when you store it. If you bump it hard when the cable is plugged in it turns it until a paperweight.
Where can I find the stl’s ?