Cable ties are dangerous (pet peeve)

[Phonetek]

It always amazes me just how few people know how to properly cut cable ties. Even in the back where I work there are a bazillion of them and none of them are trimmed properly. People use scissors or diagonal cutters and snip. More times than not they are sticking out often cut on an angle making them nice and sharp. Every drag your arm across one of them? You bleed like you tried to commit suicide. I actually got to school our mechanic on this.

The PROPER way to do it is to use a tool called "Flush Cuts", they can be bought at any hardware store for about 8 bucks. Their sole purpose in life is to cut cable ties. After you tighten the tie you put the blades flush to the square part of the cable tie and snip it off. You rub your finger across and find no sharp edges. TADA!

Even seasoned telecom guys know better but are in too much of a hurry or too cheap to buy the right tool. I've been cut by cable ties so many times and it sucks. In the back of our lanes I am getting rid of all of them and starting fresh. They should surround the entire bundle of the cables. When you add more cables then you cut out the old and put in new not stack them. Then the sharp edges will pierce through the new cables.

If you're OCD like me and you want it to look very neat. All cables should be formed evenly and look the same throughout the bundle. When you use the cable ties, they should be evenly spaced. Once you trim off the excess the heads should be turned to the back of the bundle so they are out of sight. It takes a couple extra minutes but looks great when your done.

Now there is an even better way and they sell rolls of velcro. Nice thing about that is if you need to add or pull out a cable you just take it off and you can reuse it or cut a longer piece. Although it's much more expensive. I'll take some before and after photo's when I do it and show you what I'm talking about.

NOTE: Flush cuts are designed ONLY to cut cable ties NOT wire, it will damage or snap the blades off.

There is one other alternative but rarely used and it's called lacing cord. It's an a 8 strand wax covered string. It's Incredibly strong and works great. There are several different types of specific knots to tie it in depending on what you are doing in order to be effective. It it far stronger than cable ties. It's mainly used in telecom central offices to form all the immense amount of cable. Cable ties are strictly forbidden in Central offices and you will be thrown out and banned if anyone even sees you using them.

[jamoke]

Could use a few ties here:

[Phonetek]

I've seen that before in some central offices and it's inexcusable. I'm willing to bet that many of those are dead cables that weren't mined out. That's just lazy and there is no excuse to ever let frames get like that. They should have overhead racks and standoffs coming down and cables should follow suit. That is is at the point of no return and just sickening. What a nightmare and ridiculously easily avoided. I hope people got fired for that.

[boatman37]

I work in IT. My last job it wasn't real bad but I made all new custom length ethernet cables and rewired our patch panel/switch stack. It was a smaller company with only 1 closet and a server room so not a real big job. I also color coded the panels based on where they went to.

[bowl1820]

Cable management, As long as it's not all Ketchup & Mustard!

[Phonetek]

Things like this is what erk me and I had to fix

[Phonetek]

This is better but only to about 80% of my liking.

[GrumpyCatFace]

LOL That was some hack job. Nice work, fixing that mess. I'm an old networking hack, now a database administrator. Things like that drive me crazy, both in the physical and digital world.

Looking forward to more videos from the back of the alley. That's a fascinating workspace you've got.

[boatman37]

Nice work. I bought a bunch of the nylon velcro straps for home use because I am often adding or changing my network configuration. My home office is a little sloppier than I like but I do have 2 servers, a desktop, a home laptop, and a work laptop with 6 monitors...lol. Cables everywhere here....lol

[Phonetek]

Thanks, That only took me a few minutes to clean up a bit. When there aren't any bowlers there I can really do it right. I can block the lanes off in maintenance mode and unplug whatever I want. Provided they buy me cable ties, I was using that from my stash. Although I have a ton of them they weren't cheap, they can buy there own LOL I do have about 30 100' rolls of velcro strips too but even more expensive, I'm not using them there.

At home under every desk and the entertainment center I use the velcro. My house may not be clean but all my wires are formed perfectly, even in the kitchen behind the counter appliances LOL