Normal bake and low poly pretty much done. This is the raw unedited normalmap. Tried to get some kind of phone cable extruded there but it looks a bit stiff.
Lol I like to learn :) .... Well I deleted , I was doing it by planes around a spline path but they overlapped all time ... I planned to extrude then inzbrush but ...
the short version is maya extrude tools are pretty lacking. I've gotten better results sometimes by rebuilding the curve to have more points than seem necessary.
look at the pic on the right you can see that the screws on the side are floating cause you can see them extrude past the edge of the model on the far right.