Face Shield Glasses Clips by Spektyr

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

To my knowledge, this is an innovative design.
I am not, however, claiming that there isn't significant room for improvement.
Backstory: I was watching a lady who was working and wearing a face shield. It was a style I hadn't noticed before, where a face shield was part of a glasses frame that didn't have lenses. She also was wearing a pair of glasses, and had the "shield glasses" sitting on top/above her prescription glasses.
I thought, "Well that's crazy. It makes sense if you don't need glasses to have the empty frame kind, but if you DO wear glasses why not just make the shield attach to those?"
So I started thinking about how to do that, and ran through a bunch of iterations before I found something that worked well, and then five stages of refinement from there.
My requirements:
it had to be universal, or at least reasonably simple to size for various frames.
it needed to be simple (enough) to install/remove
It needed to print quickly and without support
it needed to not require additional specialized equipment
So what we have here fits that bill, perhaps not great on sizing, but it's not hard to change how large a frame it would fit. I have little doubt that once this gets noticed there's going to be a bunch of remixes involving different sizes and (more likely) some really cool improvements to the design.
The concept is simple: Take any clear plastic sheet. Hole punch two holes in each side spaced to match the clips. Push the clips through the holes, then feed a paperclip through the slots to lock the sheet to the clips. Any similarly slender object would work as long as it won't fall out - A larger or smaller paperclip can be bent as needed to fit. You could just as easily stick a toothpick, a bit of wire, or whatever is handy through the slots.
Then simply snap/slide the clips onto each side of a pair of glasses and adjust them backwards as needed to get a nice fit. I also recommend rounding off the bottom corners of the shield so they don't jab you in the collarbone.
In case it's not obvious, the purpose of one of the "pegs" being shaved off at an angle is so that it can be printed without needing supports.
Thoughts on improvements:
The clips are flexible, but I went more for strength than flexibility. I have trouble snapping them onto my glasses - the force required makes me worry I'll break something (like the glasses). But they do snap on/off easily at the narrower point near the ears.
Being longer (taller, as printed) might help. I debated this and went with the more compact (faster printing) design. The advantage would be a wider "grip" on the shield by spacing the pegs out more, but I haven't observed any real "droop" without it.
Over the top connection? I considered it but never came up with a fully satisfactory way to eliminate the tendency of the weight of the shield to lift the back of the clip. But if that were solved have the clip go over the top of the glasses frame (think upside-down U, rather than C) that design would be easier to make more "universal fit"
Less Nerdy. I don't personally care about walking around with a pair of paperclips through a couple 3D printed parts mounted to my glasses. But there are more fashion-forward people out there. I ultimately rejected the second 3D printed part that would lock the shield in place since that was more to print and would slow production. Again, I wanted something "easily made from stuff on-hand".
PLEASE REMIX THIS IF YOU HAVE IDEAS.