What? Just put em in a bag, dude…
They came in a bag, I just find it easier and neater to deal with them this way when they get tossed off in a toolbox or the random kitchen junk/fastener drawer.
If you cut a small hole in the bag 1/5 of the way down, it keeps them together and you can bend a tie to get a single one out.
Still doesn’t make it any easier to pull out a specific color in a mixed variety color pack…
Good point, I have single-colour bags only.
Ok, now imagine you have like 4000 of them, which normally just fit in a normal sized ziplock bag. Bro is going to sit there for literally hours threading them onto another zip tie.
Oh hell with all that, if I got that many zip ties, I’m just gonna zip tie them in sensible size nobody’s really counting bundles.
Zip tie one around them all, with the heads up, and stick a caribiner around the loop one. Then you can stick it on your belt, with the heads facing up. Just make sure to ratchet it tighter a notch every couple you use.
Eventually I moved on to these
Nice. But I ain’t about to buy 4 separate ones at $8.86 each to separate a 100 pack of 4 colors that came out of a mix pack that cost like $3.36 total…
Well no. Thats when you zip tie the ties… but if you’re someone who uses a lot of them regularly, for work, the spring loaded ones become pretty useful.
This will go well with my duct tape and chloroform holster
The real lpt alwaysin the commenta
I bought a bag of 1000 zipties once.
Once.
Were they multicolored?
Nope–black and a single size.
Ok.
I needed colors to tag otherwise unlabeled wire harnesses…
Colors is a good way to do it! I’ve only had to label wire harnesses a couple times and i used sharpie tick marks on the wires themselves. It worked but was awkward and took time to find the one wire i needed.
I bought ~190m of DC wire once.
Jesu
That’s a lot
What for?I asked for 5m for a science project. A coil of 190m was the minimum they sold.
It wasn’t too expensive (not copper), so I went with it.That’s actually hilarious. What did you do with the leftover??
I still keep it in a cardboard box full of other electronics related stuff, which includes my shitty soldering iron (which is shitty enough to have made me thought that I was bad at soldering, until I once put my hands on a Weller) and other pieces of out of dysfunctional electronics that I have hoarded, thinking that I might do something with them, someday.
I gave this as a reply to your comment because it is in the same spirit.
The iron and the wire are the most used components out of that box.
Well you’re not going to run out of wire for a while. lol
Or a rubber band
Or, now hear me out, you could just wrap the zip ties with…
A zip tie! Genius I know, who woulda guessed?
These remind me of quipu
It amazes me that we still don’t really know how they “translate” but still know they were used for so many different things
You can also just slide the zip ties backwards onto an intact zip tie. The lock will not engage backwards. That way when you’ve used the stored ties you still have one to use.
Yeah you’re right. I actually ended up thinking about exactly that after I finished arranging this.
Oh well, whatever. Good tip though. 👍
Back at ya 😎
Good call
Another zip tie tip - they are reusable if you cut the right end off when removing one. Might be obvious to others, but took me years to figure out somehow.
Just don’t cut the end attached to the head of the zip tie. Cut the tail right before it enters the zip-tie-hole, release it, and you just made a new but shorter zip tie
You can also take a precision screen driver or knife tip, and use it to pull back the locking tab and release the entire length.
I do this all the time, at work, but with a utility knife, or my pocket knife
You can also squeeze the locking head with pliers to disengage the mechanism
Smart!
They also make zip ties with a press release for the locking tabs, which are useful in temporary hold situations but don’t impair their function as normal zip ties (they don’t accidentally release).
A tapered pointy end of one can go in upside down, through the wrong direction of the lock, and force the lock tooth upwards!
I applaud your use of your free time. Ignore the haters.
Haha! It probably only took me about 20 minutes or so, and felt somewhat relaxing, similar to playing with a fidget toy. But unlike a fidget toy, I actually sort of accomplished a thing at the same time 👍
Task avoidance at its finest.
I think every man goes through a zip-tie everything phase. They’re great.
I’ve dramatically reduced my zip-tie reliance with a few other cable management thingies which are also great.
Firstly this type of silicone cable tie:
They can be used just like a zip tie, just wrapped around a some cable strands to make a bunch. You can also use them on things like charging cords which are regularly folded up and taken out. You use the end with the loop and knob to wrap around a single cable strand, and just leave it there so it’s always in place. Then you fold up the cable and wrap the longer loop around a couple of times and then hook it on the knob.
Secondly this spiral wrap stuff:
I’ve found this to be much more versatile for things like PCs with monitors and lots of cables. You can just re-wrap if you need to add or remove a cable which you can’t really do with zip ties.
I know zip ties can be used for more than mere cable management. I also know they’re still the best thing for the job in many cases.
I once used zip ties to fit a CPU cooler fan onto the heatsink of a little Graphics Card.
Amazing.
Grab a handful of zip ties.
Take one zip tie, wrap it around the bundle and tighten, but don’t overtighten.
The end. Exponentially faster than whatever the hell this post is.
True, but this makes it way easier to keep count while also keeping colors arranged.
Who is counting zip ties???
That one supply manager from the office that decided every item needs to be individually counted…they spend thousands in labor to save $6 every year.
You ever been on a team that installed a whole new system and all new Ethernet lines at a bank? I have, twice. We’re the kinda guys that arrange what they call cableporn on the internet.
If you gotta run 32 Ethernet lines for a distance of 200 feet, those zip ties have to be evenly and sensibly spaced, so it’s part measuring, dividing out, and wait for it…
Counting.
So are you a mechanic with oily hands or someone who installs cables in banks?
Both
Neither.
This is amazing, you can easily count them too which you can’t do in a bag.
You make an awesome point that flew right over my head when I arranged that. I know there are 22 zip ties of each color left. Was originally 25 of each color, but I took 2 of each color for our vehicle, and took 1 of each color to zip the rest onto.
I don’t often need zip ties, so usually I don’t think much on counting zip ties, but that can be very useful if your day job is running Ethernet cables or whatnot…
Countability for the win! 👍
lol, I love lemmy.
OP comes up with something half-assed clever that piques interest (at the very least), and they get dragged…Dragged with love ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Because this only makes sense if you have like 8 zip ties.
Makes more sense if you’re using them on vehicle wiring harnesses and sensors to tag what goes where, when your hands are otherwise covered in nasty engine oils and fluids.
Not exactly easy to manage a bag when hands are covered in oil ya know…
Well this is brilliant.
I cut the corner of the bag they came in so I can shake one loose at a time.
I didn’t know how you’d have so many loose.
Initially that’s exactly what I did too, but I needed to be able to pick between specific colors, and that’s rather difficult with just the corner of the bag cut, especially when your hands are covered in nasty engine oils and fluids and crud…
Thank you for the tip and also the beautiful picture.
You’re quite welcome.
If you think for like 3 extra seconds, I could also use this arrangement to weave color patterned zip tie ‘fabric’ of sorts, but that isn’t quite my thing. Still it would work though…
I’ve definitely weaved zip ties like this as a kid lol though not with color coordination in mind
… and then turn that strip of zip ties into an Ultimate Warrior costume!..
/s but also don’t…or your dad may need to cut you out of it using tin snips because you pulled them to tight…hypothetically
LOL!
Many years ago I jokingly dared my friend’s sister to dress up in packing tape. I was totally being silly, but she actually did it hahaha!
I ended up having to cut her out of it. Guess she didn’t think about how tape sticks to hairs in sensitive areas…
Yes she was of age, like 24 at the time I think.
If they’re in a fine bag, I learned to snip the bag halfway down. Just an inch or less. You then grab one from the middle and pull it out like a tissue while there’s very little chance of them falling out. They’d have to be yanked by some tool to escape. To clarify, cut the folded edge of the bag, like |_-| where the minus is
Makes sense, but not easy to pluck a specific color out with that technique though. I bought the multicolor pack to tag the different wire harness connectors on our 2005 Hyundai, as apparently all their 3 wire connectors fit each other.
I ain’t trying to have to pluck specific color zip ties out the side of a bag when my hands are covered in cruddy engine oil and stuff…
No I didn’t need a 100 pack, but that was the cheapest multicolor pack of zip ties I could find, just over $3.
Hey genius, lpt for you: stop buying mixed color bags and then you can… leave them in the bag. Omg. So crazy. Like you keep defaulting to that being the reason you have to do all of this, but if it’s so damn important to color code, stop buying the mixed bags. It’s the same price to get the unmixed ones and then you don’t have to do this ass backwards shit all the time. You’re literally causing your own problems and then acting like you solved some great hindrance to society 😂
Alright, you have a Merry Christmas as well.
These were literally purchased to color tag unlabeled wiring harnesses in a vehicle, so please ever so kindly fuckoff, I literally needed the colors.
