MakerBot Earphone Caddy by Chasiboy

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

While atttending the makerbot demonstration/workshop in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, is saw the OWL WRAP EarPhone Caddy and was delighted by it. I asked Zach to print one for me and have been using it and showing it to anyone interested.
I was wondering how to get the word out about the Makerbot machine and I thought that having a functional Thingy made by the machine; to hand out as a MakerBot business card would be nice, so I present the MakerBot Earphone Caddy; mach 1, mod 0, for immediate development. Some of the things I built into this model are: (hopefully) 1) machine friendliness, using the machine's attributes in the development of the part. If you print it standing up from the flat at the bottom I am guessing that the machine will handle the gradual overhangs ok. and 2) The advertising text (Makerbot your idea) is made very shallow in the hopes that it will take advantage of the way the machine layers the plastic and be readable: kind of like raised lettering and. 3) You can print a dozen of them at a time if you stand them up like dominoes.
Some issues to be fine tuned prior to putting this thingy into production are: 1) The the head phones need to easily pop in and out of their holes during retrieval and wrap up and stay put while in storage. I find that the way I wrap the wire helps to keep my OWL WRAP's phones in place while in my pocket but it would be nice to have that worked out more clearly in future iterations. 2) The rectangular hole for the jack should be ambidextrous so the jack can slip under the wrapped wires into the hole's depression in a 'tight fit' sort of way, but not through it. 3) The text could be adjusted to be as clear as possible (I need to see a printed sample print to think thru that one), and 4) The vertical build of the part should be supportive of the machine's building technique, but again the sample will speak to that.
I am using SolidWorks to produce the model and I am interested in helping to develop it into a cool little way to get the word out about this amazing price breakthrough into the world of rapid prototyping. The fact that you can print you idea(s) on a machine that costs less than $1,000.00 is going to bring RP technology into ubiquity.
If anyone can print this with a MakerBot and send me a copy I'll be happy inspect it, use it, refine it, and try again until we get it right.
P.S. this idea may work well with other RP machines, but my intention is to refine it for MakerBot because The MakerBot is the first machine to get below the $1,000.00 price mark. I think the personality of the builds of this machine are beautiful and I don\'t intend for this prototype to become some slick marketing tool. Having the finished part be a real prototype built on the machine that it represents is just too zen to forego.
Chas.
www.chascolburn.com
chascolburn@mac.com
just ask for address if you are going to send one.