Wire Guide Folder

This is a tool that I designed for work. It's a folder used on a 1" double needle sewing machine to sew two pieces of fabric together. The bottom piece(2” wide) comes out of the folder the same as it went in, flat and unchanged. The top piece(2 7/8” wide) is formed into a tent shape with a turned out edge on each side as it exits the folder and is sewn on both sides by the double needle sewing machine that has a fabric puller attached to it to help pull the sewn piece as it's sewn. Their is also a string which is pulled through the inside of the “wire guide” as the part is called to be used to pull wires through the finished part. Usually we will run 3-4 600' rolls of the material through it at a time. The finished product is cut into various lengths anywhere from a few inches to about twelve feet in length. This tedious part used to be made by a sewing machine operator using a single needle machine sewing one side at a time, Now it can be made by it self leaving the sewing operator to do more pleasant and less tedious work. And the time to make the part has been reduced by 60%. The tool that is in the picture is the actual tool that was used and has made in excess of 15,000 feet of the sewn part so far without any signs of wear to it. The tool was designed at home using Autodesk 123D Design, sliced with Simplify 3D and printed with a Flashforge Creator Pro with PLA filament.

The all black folder in the video and picture was a prototype I was testing you can see the cover was just taped to the upper base with duct tape for the test.

I've taken this design and made changes to it to accept different widths of fabrics for other parts. Some using a narrower bottom piece of fabric, some have a narrower top piece to produce a smaller tent affect.

Print Settings

Filament: PLA

Layer Height: .2mm

Infill: 20%

Supports: Yes, dissolvable supports are a big plus with this print because of the narrow slots that the fabric has to pass through it can be a little difficult to clean out without it. I didn't have dissolvable supports so I made a little tool to fit in the slots to clean out the supports.

Temperature: Extruder 200c

Build Platform 0c

Print Speed: 63mm/s

Videos

Prototype Folder

Folder Used in Production