Why Build A Extension Cord Holder?!

Building an extension cord holder for your first home CNC project how exciting? I know right…. In the beginning stages of building the CNC, I thought of all the projects we would complete together. Now after its completion, a flood of excitement and pure joy has entered my thoughts and projects to create has vanished. (Importance of keeping a note file on your phone to write down projects which I now do today)

So sitting in my shop I looked around and thought what improvements could be made to make the shop look cleaner? Glancing to where my extension cords hung on a nail, hammered into the 2×4. I decided to start there for my first CNC project.

Designing The Extension Cord Holder

Designing the extension cord holder all took place inside of Fusion 360. A little side note if you are ever deciding to get a CNC I recommend that you start using Fusion 360 in your workflow today. Fusion 360 takes a little time to get to using and it will make your life much easier if you understand the program before your CNC is ready to be used. I began using Fusion in Janurary of 2018 in anticipation of a CNC coming into my life in 2018 at some time.

Ok, enough rambling. When designing the extension cord holder i wanted a clean desgin and an easy way to hang them up out of the way. If you know anything about aersopace a lot of structal components have what are called lighting holes in them. The reason for lighting holes is to reduce weight of the structure. Sometimes the lighting holes will be formed with a flange and this will cause the structure to gain ridgity.

I work in aerospace so, I decieded to throw a few lighting holes into this extension cord holder. Mostly because I think it looks cool but also giving me some more hanging locations if needed. Now that I had my general desgin it was off to the CNC.

All the CAM was done inside of Fusion 360 as well. Another reason I truly love using the program!

Cutting The Extension Cord Holder

Cutting the extension cord holder took roughly 5-6min. I was running @65ipm with a DOC of .125″ in 3/4″ material. Since this was actually the first project being cut on this machine I was still trying to get a grasp on how hard I could push the machine. In a few months of running the machine, I will probably be cooking a lot faster on my feeds and speeds.

Cutters

The cutter I used for the extension cord holder was just a garden variety single flute. I know others probably would cringe on using a single flute but its what I had on hand and seemed to work “ok”. I would have probably much rather liked to use something like a compression bit. I would love to your guy’s feedback on what type of cutters you like to use in plywood?

Wood Selection

The wood I choose to use was just some 3/4″ pine plywood that I happened to find behind my lumber rack. It even had some burn marks where it got used to hold something during a welding operation. Making this project again for air hoses possibly I would probably end up using 1/2″ plywood due to cost and weight.  What would be your first choice in a material?

Final Thoughts/What Would I Change

Building the extension cord holder I feel like it was great first CNC project. It brought a lot of value add to shop in far as making it more orderly. This wasn’t just a little trinket item it served a purpose and most of the CNC projects I do probably will in the future serve a purpose.

If I were to build this again I would change a few things, however. I would put more of an ark in the handle than just a plain old square. With the handle as well I would add some more “meat” where the handle meets the body. This would be in case the extension cord holder was dropped I would feel like it would be the first thing to break off. Finally, the last thing that I would do differently would be to get some 1/2″ plywood to reduce the weight.

What would want to change on this extension cord holder? Thanks for reading!

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