Spent 3 hours on a cable tray and still tripped on it

Last month in Austin I built a desk from two sawhorses and a solid core door, then added a cheap metal cable tray underneath to hide the power strip. The tray rattled every time my feet bumped it, so I drilled some foam pipe insulation onto the edges, but the zip ties I used snapped within a week. Has anyone found a better way to keep their under-desk cables quiet without spending $60 on a fancy mount?

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david7391mo ago

That foam pipe insulation trick sounds like a good idea on paper but zip ties always fail under tension. What kind did you use? The thin white ones from Harbor Freight snap if you look at them wrong. You need the heavy duty black ones rated for outdoor use. Also did you drill the insulation all the way through or just wrap it around the tray edge? If you drilled through the foam and the tray you might have created a weak point where the plastic tears.

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ericb661mo ago

Man, I feel your pain on the Harbor Freight zip ties. Those white ones are basically just decoration, I've had them snap in my truck bed just from the sun baking them for a month. I ended up using the thick black ones from the hardware store, the ones rated for like 50 pounds or whatever, and I doubled them up on each corner just to be safe. As for drilling, I went straight through the foam and the tray, and yeah, I kinda worried about that too but I put a little rubber washer under the tie head to spread the load out. So far no tears, but I'm checking it every couple weeks when I wash the car.

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