Let’s dive into my first CAD project ever.
Personally, I have quite a few pens. Eventually I decided to make a stand for all of them. So far I’ve printed three similar structures for all the different pens.
Although a rather simple project without many obstacles, there were still a few factors to consider in this design. These include the size of holes, the height and length of the structure, and depth of holes at the bottom. I began by creating a simple mockup of my what I wanted to make and what could be more efficient than the typical coffee cup type storage. I eventually settled on a rectangular shape, but I wanted to keep it small to fit multiple on my desk. In hindsight I could’ve made the prototypes smaller, but my concern about structural integrity seemed valid at first.
Technical Drawing
To the right is Technical Drawing of the pen holder. (Pretty bad) As seen many of the holes for the pens at the bottom are smaller than those at the top. Essentially the process was measuring the pens at different lengths from the bottom and their respective widths at those points. All measurements are in millimeters.
Struggles
It took much longer than I expected to fully create the project between school and attempting to teach myself FreeCad. It seems one of the hardest parts of doing projects is simply finishing them. As mentioned above my main concern was my unfamiliarity with 3d printing and any tolerances I needed to include in my model. For each pen I ended up settling on millimeter difference between pen diameter and structure. So far, I have printed two of the above models. (different sizing for each pen) I still need to print another one for my remaining pens. I myself do not own a 3d printer so I’ve been using the site www.makexyz.com to print for me. I would recommend them if you do not want to go through the trouble of finding someone to print for you.