As with most college students – desks are cluttered. They offer limited space which needs to be used in the best possible manner. To help facilitate organizing on a desk, I will create a holder that holds the essentials – phone, wallet, charging cables and pencils/ pens all in one. This should reduce the space taken up by these items if they were stored separately.
There are two sources of inspiration I used:
1.
My first inspiration source is a multi-function pencil box. It is approximately the size of the average pencil box but can be opened in many ways. This allows it to have many sliding compartments. These kind of pencil boxes use clever packaging mechanics to store a lot of stationary into a smaller space.
2.
My second source of inspiration is a car carrier, mainly for how it arranges cars in a very efficient manner. Cars don’t remain flat, parallel to the road surface. Instead, many of them are angled such that the front of the car slots under the back of the car in front of it.
These two sources of inspiration use simple but effective mechanics to pack many things into a small space. A simple design is a quality I wanted to incorporate into my holder.
Regarding aesthetics, the holder should mimic its simple function. Thus, I wanted to have it be a simple rectangle. Since this holder was to fit on top of my Xbox One, I wanted to put the console’s logo on the side of the holder. I also would paint it black to match the console’s color.
1. The first step is to identify on what are the dimensions based around. I will be using a small wallet and an iPhone 5s as a baseline. These two are relatively generic in size, allowing the holder to be suitable to hold more than just these specific items.
2. Once the dimensions are decided, I used Fusion 360 to design the component. A high-level view of the steps taken are listed below:
a. Draw a rectangle and extrude it
b. Draw 2 construction lines separating the 3 sections – front, middle and rear
c. For the front section, make a simple rectangular cutout.
d. For the middle section, make a large rectangular cutout and draw a crossbeam that is a little off-center; it is closer to the rear section than the front section
e. the rear section should have two deep but narrow pencil/pen holders and a small deep cut-out for charging cables.
f. Import a picture of the Xbox logo and using splines, draw the logo on the side of the holder. Write “XB1” next to it.
3. Once the CAD process was completed, I saved the file in the STL format and sent it to NVBOTS for printing. 14 hours later, I picked up the part
4. The supporting material was cut off and the holder is completed.
PROS
• Holder’s size is relatively compact when the amount of stuff is can hold is considered
• Relatively light – easy to move around
• Not fiddly to insert anything into the compartments
• Durable – it’s just one part so things are unlikely to fall off/break off.
• Fits in the designated area
CONS
• Looks boring (simpler may not always be better)
• Things can fall out of their compartments if the holder laden with things is jerked/moved around quickly
• Design could be optimized to make it smaller but have the same carrying capacity. This would reduce print time, weight, cost, etc.
• Forgot to put supports for the text on the side
If I were to make a second prototype, I would change:
What would change:
• Reduce spacing between the compartments
• Use supports properly, so they break away easily instead of requiring a hack saw
• Color
• Add some more detail, like more writing on the side
• Potentially a lid to prevent things from falling out during transportation of the holder
What would remain the same:
• Exterior dimensions
• Interior capacity
• Method by which is holds its contents
• Overall layout
In conclusion, this project has taught me how to use Fusion effectively, how to design a project in a systematic manner and how to present my ideas in a way people can understand. In the future, I would incorporate more complex geometry (like lofting and sweeping) into my models.
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