Bookshelf

Intention

My sister has a hobby of making miniature versions of her favorite books. However, I share a room with her and her books are everywhere because she doesn’t have anywhere to store them. So, I want to make her a miniature bookshelf (Also, Christmas is coming up, so this could be her present).  

Research + Context

I was influenced to the style of my sister. She likes simpler designs, so I decided to go with a classic bookshelf design. One similar to the bookshelves found in libraries.  I had her look up bookshelves to find one she liked:

Sketch of Project

book dimensions: 20 mm x 30 mm x 4 mm  

Top: prototype dimensions, Bottom: Final dimensions

The first step will be to measure her books or have her give me the measurements of her books. Then I will CAD a bookcase based on these measurements in fusion 360. Then, I will have my sister look over the design and have her suggest what to add or remove from the bookshelf. I think designing it in fusion 360 should be enough for my sister to be able to picture what the bookshelf will look like.

I want to print this on the Stratasys because the filament is white and the supports are dissolvable. My sister wanted the bookshelf to be white so that it can match all of her books, and I want the supports to be dissolvable because when I printed the 3D lego from the first class, I accidentally broke it while trying to remove the supports. 

I will make all my sketches in the xz-plane. I’ll extruded each component along the y-axis. I will only need rectangles for the shelf: one to extrude and then shell for the outline, and 2 smaller rectangles to extrude for the first and second shelves. The large rectangle will be extruded 20 mm and shelled inside with a thickness of 5 mm. Each shelf rectangle will be extruded 20 mm and joined with the bookshelf shell to create one body.  

Reflection

When I printed the bookshelf and gave it to my sister, she found out that she actually gave me the wrong measurements. So, it turns out that only some of her books fit in the shelf. She still wants that shelf so she can store the smaller books, but she wanted me to make another one that has larger shelves so her larger books can fit. She also said she wanted more shelves, so I made her another one that has 5 mm taller shelves and double the number of shelves. I just reflected the original shelf and put them back-to-back.

In the future, I will double check measurements for anything I make and make sure that they are correct. Or I will be more specific when I ask for measurements and details.

Photos

The final rendering of the bookcase (it's double-sided, so 6 shelves):

Left: Final double-sided bookcase, Right: prototype