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My 3D Printing Progress

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3d-printing
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I had previously written about getting into 3D printing. In that post, I shared my first prints and what my intentions were for the future. Today, I will be sharing two of my recent prints. The first is a simple laptop holder. The second - my most complex design and print yet - is a desk speaker stand.

I had purchased a used Lenovo Thinkpad on eBay. I wanted a holder so it could sit pretty on my desk. Below is an image of the laptop in all its bland glory:

I came up with a half-ellipsoid design for it. Next are images of the laptop holder and how it is placed on my desk with the laptop in it.

My speakers were behind my monitors. I have a three-monitor setup, so I did not have desk space left for them. I wanted a speaker stand that could lift each speaker above the monitors and allow the sounds to be unobstructed by the monitors. The speaker stand itself would be on the desk.

This print is the most complex thing I have designed to date. It presents several challenges:

  1. The speaker stands cannot be printed once and must be split into many parts.
  2. I had never designed any part that had joints.
  3. Designing such a piece - that does not qualify as simplistic - was challenging for a 3D modelling beginner. I am a 3D modelling beginer :)

I produced a functional design that used dovetail joints to join the parts. Here is an image of the parts of a single stand:

The parts comprise of:

  1. A base
  2. Stems. Connected to lift the speaker to a suitable height.
  3. The top. On which the speaker itself seats.

The order of assembly is:

  1. Join a stem to the base.
  2. Optionally, add several stems to extend the height of the stand.
  3. Add the top to the last stem.

It is a simple thing to assemble. Assembly does not require glue.

To improve the base’s traction on the desk, I added pads to them. Doing this increased the base’s grip on a smooth surface and improved the stability of the structure.

I ran out of spools after printing the parts for the first stand and only the top of the second. I switched to another filament spool of another colour, resulting in a gruesome combination of pink and green parts. I decided to leverage this colour imbalance by alternating the colours of the parts during assembly. The chaotic result looked appealing enough to me:

These pictures are the results of installing these stands into my workspace.

Conclusion #

This post has shared my recent builds: a laptop holder and a speaker stand. I find 3D printing solutions for workspace improvement stimulating. The speaker stand has also allowed me to accomplish my first multi-part build. You can see the STEP files of these parts in this GitHub repository. That repository also contains parts not discussed in this post. You can go ahead and use anything you find interesting. Thanks for staying with me to the end.