Slimline Cable Combs

This is a comprehensive set of cable combs for "slimline" (~3mm diameter) Ethernet patch cables.

After obtaining an obscene number of these cables for my rack, I went looking for a suitable set of cable combs for them, but found nothing. So I crafted these for myself, but I figure they will be useful for others too.

These combs are specifically designed to fit the Monoprice brand “SlimRun” CAT6a Ethernet patch cables (https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=15125) which are ~3mm in diameter, though other slim Ethernet cables should reasonably fit. The design is a typical “pinch” cable comb where the cable is lightly pinched through a rectangular opening slightly less than its diameter (2.8mm), and then sits inside a circular area just slightly larger than its diameter (3.8mm), keeping the cable securely in place. In my testing the cables are perfectly snug in the in-out direction, as well as the lateral direction on all cables except Blue (which is, for some reason, slightly narrower than the other colours). Thickness is 7mm.

There are two main categories of combs in this set: open and enclosed. Open combs use only friction to keep the cables inside the comb, like most cable combs. The enclosed combs also feature an opening along the length of the slim portion, as well as a corresponding bar that will fit through that opening. This closure permits the pinning of the cable into the comb: this could be useful on things like a final comb before splitting runs (which could pull the cables out of open combs), or to zip-tie the combs themselves to other surfaces - the opening will fit a standard small cable tie (~2mm x 4mm). The enclosed combs are denoted with the “-closed” suffix in the file names.

Within the two categories are numerous sizes and groupings designed for almost every possible layout:

• 1x 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8: for individual horizontal groupings of cables (note: 1x1 is probably useless for the open comb, but could be used as a tag anchor with the closed comb; included only for completeness)
• 2x 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8: for paired groupings of cables
• 2x 12, 18, 24: for very large groupings e.g. close to a patch panel; these use a wider 2x spacing along with wider spacing between the individual 2x6 segments provide additional rigidity

I print these in ASA, and you should probably use it or another hard plastic to prevent breakage, though you should still be careful with them due to the very small size and tolerances.

Hopefully someone finds these useful!

Created with TinkerCad: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/aW0ucdnDx0x-neat-bojo-lahdi