Cable Carrier Link

One link of a snap-together cable carrier: a 14mm channel in a 22mm-pitch frame, 18mm tall, 2.5mm plates, 4mm pins. Each plate steps outward toward the rear so one link's fork straddles the next link's nose with 0.3mm a side, and the pins snap into the sockets with 0.35mm of radial clearance. Print a dozen and thread them onto a moving axis. Two things it is not, both worth knowing before you print a run. The pins are horizontal cylinders, so their lower quadrant prints unsupported — no orientation fixes that, because a chain's pin axis is perpendicular to both the travel and the plates, so standing the link up only moves the sag to the other end. At Ø4 over about 3mm of stick-out it is a fraction of a layer, and the socket is a teardrop — a 45° roof instead of a round one that would droop into the pin — so it still pivots. That is the accepted compromise in every printed chain of this kind, not something solved here. And a commercial drag chain has a moulded shoulder that stops it dead straight so a run holds itself up over an unsupported span; that shoulder is not modelled, so these articulate both ways. It is a cable carrier for a guided run, not a self-supporting drag chain. The top bar bridges the channel, which at 14mm is a routine span. PETG — PLA links snap at the pin.

from £2.20example, in PLA