Tuesday, September 06, 2016
How to Properly Wrap All Your Cables so They Don't Turn Into a Tangled Mess
gizmodo.com: Did you know there’s a special way to wrap your cables that not only keeps them neat and tidy, but also makes them perfectly unfurl without tangling when you’re ready to use them? It’s the de facto way to store cables in the video, film, and music industries, and it can also help lengthen the life of all your cords.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
So I decided to read this article/watch this video because I was hoping for some insight into "why" coiling works. We all know that it prevents knots and keeps kinks out of a cable, but, much light knots, we just kind-of take it for granted, without really looking into or being taught to physics of why it works. It would be interesting to find out. A second thought about this article (and the reason I am commenting on it) is that I don't really remember every being taught to coil. Maybe in early high school, but I was certainly never taught here. It's something that we just kind of assume everyone knows how to do, when, most likely, at least one person arrived at this school not knowing this method of storing cables. At least one person coils incorrectly and is afraid to ask for help because everyone else just instinctively does this. I hope that person sees this article. That being said - this has also been the clearest description of coiling I've ever seen (though it might not be great to repeat "overworked and underpaid" to yourself over and over again).
Wow, coiling cable properly made it to Gizmodo! It is now in the domain of the general public! Seriously though, coiling cable appropriately seems pretty obvious to technicians, but is surprisingly not known by the greater public. I remember the 1st time I was taught to coil cable “over, under” it took me a fair bit to get the hang of it. This guy’s video was pretty solid, although I’ve never heard of coiling cable referred to as the “Roadie Wrap”. The “overworked and underpaid” mantra is pretty funny and clever, although like Lauren said, maybe it is not the best thing to continue to repeat to yourself. It’s kind of depressing and fosters an unfortunate attitude. Although, what I found missing in the video was an explanation that not every cable wants to follow the over under rule. Some cables are much more receptive to ¼” overhand twist each time for the length of the cable. At least when I coil cable, I find it is always a judgment call whether I go over, over, over or over, under, etc.
Cool video, glad to see this as made its way onto the internet. I knew over under for a while and try to always implement it even with cords around the house. However my internship this summer was interesting because each production manager I was under, there were four, had a different mentality about coiling cable. One did it almost exclusively on the floor and wrapped it in a circle, however we were dealing with incredibly thick cables so it made sense not to hold it. Another’s mentality was just to “listen” to the cable,” which is what I used to do before I learned over under. This guy knew about over under, but said for the purposes of speed it was not worth it to fight the cables memory. At the same time though he said if you have the time to find the end of a cable and lay it all out then you should, because the tension in it will come out through the other side and make it easier to work into place. Lots of different mentalities about coiling cable. I will still stick to over under though.
Like Lauren I went into this article hoping for an explanation of why coiling cable like this works. After the article failed to give me that information I decided to take a look at the comments section and see if there was any information there. To my immense surprise there was both a surprisingly small number of people calling the article useless and a remarkable number of people actually explaining why coiling cable like this keeps kinks out of it and allows it to unroll nicely when thrown. It seems that it boils down to the opposite direction of the coils counter acts the effects of the previous coil and so keeps the cable from learning to coil and bend a specific way which ends up keeping it straight. Now this is pulled from the comments section of an article on the internet so I’m not going to swear to its accuracy but it certainly makes sense as a reason why coiling cable like this works.
While nothing new, this is a great instructional video on wrapping cable. This can be a difficult task to master, but it is important. One of things that I appreciate about this video is that Todd tells the viewer to keep in mind that the cable is made up of a lot of thin metal. And as we know, if you bend metal back and forth enough, it breaks. There really isn’t anything more annoying that having to deal with cables that are knotted and tangled up. I don’t know how many times I’ve been delayed or seen people standing around waiting for someone to deal with a cable that hasn’t been stored properly. I think people often forget how important it is when loading out a show to keep cables coiled properly. Many times, we are so focused getting out of the theater and getting home that things like proper cable coilage fall to the wayside.
Post a Comment