Ender 6 Hot End Cable Clamp

The Creality Ender 6 is an impressive 3D printer, particularly for the price. It does exhibit some obvious design issues however. One of these is the hot end cable clamp, it is just not sized well. This critical cable harness flexes constantly as the hot end moves back and forth.

The Ender 6 hot end cable clamp as supplied
The Ender 6 hot end cable clamp as supplied

The supplied clamp is one of the few 3D printed parts on the Ender 6. As you can see from the photo the clamp is simply not large enough to properly secure the cable loom. This is odd, as it would have been so simple to design and print a properly designed part.

Can you leave the clamp like this? Some hackers do, I have seen several YouTube videos of well used Ender 6’s with the original cable clamp and loose wiring. It does work, I printed my first prints with the clamp like this. However, if left alone it is likely that the wires would be stressed over time leading to premature failure of the cabling and requiring an annoying repair effort.

I first tried to fix this by using some small standoffs to provide a little more room under the clamp. I was surprised, I did have a handful of standoffs on hand with the correct M2 thread. This worked, but was not entirely satisfactory, the looming threatened to work free and the Bowden tube was still unsecured.

The problem is at both ends, but at least the frame end was more easily solved using the little metric standoffs.

Knowing that I could not possibly be alone in this issue I took a look online. Sure enough, the issue was the subject of quite a few posts in user groups. The solutions were also easy to find, this is a community of makers after all, no problem goes very long without a fix.

There are several designs for improved cable clamps available in the online repositories. I choose the Cable Clamp Remix design uploaded by CGENCO available for free on Cults 3D. It printed fast and fit perfectly, neatly securing both the cable and the Bowden tube. The original screws and two small nylon zip ties, very easy assembly. A well thought out design, this will do the job nicely!

Next up? Some LED light bars for keeping things bright while monitoring the printer remotely with the webcam. 3D printers are ripe for hacking.

Author: Andrew

An electrical engineer, amateur astronomer, and diver, living and working on the island of Hawaiʻi.

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