No. 5 Wire Organizer for Standing Desks

Small, modular wire-tray with integrated wire organizers for standing desks. This is all printable on a Prusa mini but requires additional hardware to assemble (see McMaster-Carr manifest below). Fits desks up to 3.7cm thick using non-skid foot and desks up to 4.5cm (e.g. door desks) using raw screw (will damage underside finish without the foot installed).

Parts (McMaster-Carr)

Assembly

The No. 5 system is modular allowing for a lot of different setups to be assembled so we'll pick a simple and typical setup using 2 of the “Fiver” brackets which are the longest and most filament-consuming parts in the system. You can increase the load capacity of any tray by using more of these brackets or by increasing the size of the thread-bar and aluminum tubing. You can also increase the length by connecting more parts using the techniques you'll learn in this assembly tutorial.

To start, you'll need to print the following parts:

The black polymer in this photo is Prusament PETG Carbon Fiber and the red is Filamentum Flexfill TPU 98A (Signal Red).

I used the following tools:

Note that the drill and 5.5mm bit aren't strictly necessary but they help round out the holes for the tubing which might be fouled with fuzzies or other print artifacts depending on how clean of a print you managed.

Finally there are the parts which you'll see listed in the manifest above. One thing to note is I used a single length of M4 thread-bar which I cut down into the 300mm length you can buy from McMaster-Carr. Doing this is a bit of work that I'm not going to cover. See YouTube if you want to know more about how to cut threaded rod but I'd recommend buying the precut parts if you want an easy assembly experience.

Step 1 - Assemble the Tray

Take a moment to clean out all of the holes for tubing in your parts. These are printed at 5.4mm which is exactly enough for the tubing specified above but cleaning these out with a 5.5mm drill bit make it that much easier for the parts to slide on.

First we'll use one of the “U” parts and drop in our two M4 coupling nuts and thread in the four, 300mm-M4 rods. This is where I use the thread locker; to keep the threaded rod properly seated when we start tightening down the rack in a later step.

Next you'll want to trim the aluminum tube. For the M4 version I'm specifying here, the tubing is soft and thin such that a simple utility knife will cut right through it. Just roll it back and forth a few times with a bit of pressure, being careful not to sqaush the tube.

Each of these should be cut to a length of 280mm.

Now insert the tubing into the U parts until the nest up against the coupling nuts as shown.

you can go ahead and slid on any additional U parts you've printed. These can slide to where they are needed.

Step 2 - Assemble the Fiver Clamps and Finish the Rack

We'll start by applying the neoprene to the top clamping surface. I do this by rough cutting an oversided piece of the adhesive-backed sheet ensuring there is one straight edge of the four.

Aligning this one straight edge with the back of the top surface, I stick down the piece I just cut making sure there's a lot of overlap of the other three edges.

Finally, using a sharp blade, I trim along the edges of the part.

Repeat a similar procedure for the bottom clamping surfaces; the “feet”. You'll notice there's a small notch on the bottom (print) surface of these to act as a placement and cutting guide for the neoprene.

Now slide the Fiver clamps on each end and then tighten down the rack with the lock nuts.

Spreading everything back out you should have this:

Step 3 - Assemble the Feet and Knobs. Final Step

We'll start by assembling the hand-knobs. These are simple. Just insert the hex bolt…

…add a locknut to the other end and tighten down until snug.

Now pop the M4 T-Nut into the clamp and use the hand nut to push it all the way back in.

Now thread the hand nut in through the bottom.

Finally add the foot on top by pushing the back part onto the clamp until it snaps into place then letting it settle down onto the top of the bolt below. You might need to scrub this part up and down the channel it rides in a few times to clean out any fuzzies and get it moving freely.

Finishing Touches

The channels on the top of the clamps are designed to allow for future accessories for this system. For now I've provided wire organizers that you simple slot into place.

What you end up with is a 22.5"/572mm long wire tray that should hold most single-row power strips and which are bristling with points for zip ties and velcrow so you can organize to your heart's content.

Enjoy, and don't forget to publish your builds!

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