Cable ties are so called because they were designed to hold bundles of cables together, or to fix a cable or a bunch of cables to something so that the cable/cables were not just loose on the floor or loosely draped across whatever there was in the path of the cable run.

What a clever idea, a piece of plastic smooth on one side and a molded toothed zip on the other! They say the simple things are best!!!

Soon the humble cable tie was no longer used just to hold cables but found it’s way into many other industries from forestry to packaging. I don’t think that there is an industry that has not or does not use cable ties somewhere.

The simple one-piece nylon cable tie has evolved over the years since it was first invented back in 1958 (that’s the year I was born, what a great year!). We now have them with different types of molding to the head. Some have eyelets so they can be screwed down and fixed into place. Others have a diamond shaped mount, which is springy so they can just be pushed into a pre-drilled hole in an electronics board or metal plate.

Cable ties now hold not just cables but banners, notice boards, pipes, ropes, tubes, sacks and a whole host of other things. I am going to attempt to list an industry and the way cable ties are used in that trade to see how many I can come up with, please feel free to add your uses for the cable tie, lets spread the word How Great are Cable Ties!!!

The first one is simply Electrical, here the cable tie is used to hold and fix cables in bunches onto cable trays or anything a cable is running along. They are also used to fix things to the cables such as cable markers and tags.