Blue Yeti-Nano USB cable strain relief

We got a Blue Yeti-Nano for video conferencing, gaming, Etc. It has great sound, avoids a lot of ambient noise and everyone appreciates the clear audio. It has exactly one “flaw” which is that is uses a micro USB cable to connect the microphone to the computer. This cable connects straight into the microphone and then hangs down. It is only after you have plugged and unplugged the cable a few times, or tilted the microphone and stressed the cable, do you realize that the micro USB socket is not designed as a “holding” socket.

Fairly quickly we found that the cable would no longer stay plugged in by just friction. There is another issue in that the cable has a large noise choke on the cable near the connector which adds additional weight pulling down. The result is eventually the cable is falling out by itself and that can be frustrating!

3D printing to the rescue!

There is a mounting hole on the bottom of the microphone that has a ¼-20 thread (standard for camera tripods). Blue also provides an adapter that changes it to a larger thread that is more typical on microphone stands. But we're using it with the desktop stand that it came with. 

We printed a holder (shown in green in the render image) that holds the USB cable securely on the “boot” part of the cable and keeps the larger square part from shifting backwards out of the socket. A cap head ¼-20 ½" bolt is used to secure it (the cap head bold has a nice knurled top so it is easy to tighten with your fingers). The result is a very secure cable connection that will not fall out but it can easily be removed if you want to move the microphone to a stand (suggest using a zip-tie on that stand to provide the strain relief in that case).

Problem solved.