Cable management refers to the installation of equipment to secure cables for electrical services in a building. The term is used for products or workmanship. Cable management is important in information technology (IT), communications, and power distribution.
Cable management both supports and contains cables during installation, and makes subsequent maintenance or changes to the cable system easier. Products such as cable trays, cable ladders, and cable baskets are used to support a cable through cabling routes.
Cable management is particularly important in powered equipment which must move large distances while tethered to a power source and control cabling. There are several common methods of cable management.
With a suspended sliding coil, the cables are coiled like a spring, with each loop of the coil attached to a sliding shoe on a track. As the cabling is played out, the shoes slide individually along the track and the coils expand. When sliding the other direction, the coils fold back together into a compact spiral.
Folded linear cable uses either a flexible backbone shell, or a flat cable folded into an arc along its long axis. This style of cabling is very common in computer printers to connect the printhead to the circuitry, but is also used in very large linear moving gantries. The cables are flexed only in a small region in a tight radius and so need to be very flexible.