Thursday 28 July 2016

Uke hanger final

Now it's done!

I ran out of blue filament but managed to swap in some white I had. The white was originally a roll of really bad filament that just wouldn't print on my old extruder It seems to be ok on the e3d hotend though.


I made the notches in the forks larger along with the spring clip that fit into them. Now when removing the uke from the forks it doesn't pull out if the strap gets caught etc



Trying to get the camera to focus was a pain. You can see a small hole at the end of the forks which allows you to insert a pin of some description to make doubly sure things, don't do things, they're not supposed to.



If you squint really hard and use some imagination you can see the notch on the spring.






I ordered, despite promising myself I'd wait, some black pla to make the small version, to make sure it works being printed at smaller sizes.

Monday 25 July 2016

Ok the uke hanger is done! Now for the field testing

Yep, I finally settled on the "final design". I added another place to hold the forks for getting them out of the way while it's still on the stand or in a position for travelling.



In it's position while on the stand


Position while travelling









The green thing on the stand is my replacement for the one that broke. Gotta love a 3d printer!



PLA was also used to replace the leg housing on this stand


Make sure any uke hanger isn't so high up the stand, that it raises the centre of gravity too high.
If you are outside and wind will be an issue and have a heavy song book on your stand and the uke up high as well then you asking for trouble and have only yourself to blame for not understanding basic physics.

Our group only sit at regular meetups so its never been an issue when using the ORCAS branded uke hanger, so I don't foresee any difference using this one.

The plastic is a PLA Poly Lactic Acid and should be fine and strong enough for day to day use of the hanger. Anything you do to break the hanger will be more than enough to render your ukulele nothing but splinters. Really, the plastic is very strong for this application.




























Sunday 24 July 2016

Uke Hanger modifications

I decided to make a modification to the hanger so when you're not using it it can be put away with less chance of misplacing one of the pieces.

The forks now can be slid into the holder parallel to it. This design change meant that the forks now slide into a bigger surface area. I'm still wondering if the forks shaft needs to be larger.

It hasn't been printed yet and will need to be shipped off to friends for testing.


Click for a larger version








The old version



Saturday 23 July 2016

Filament Guide

I've been redesigning my filament guide.

The first picture is of my old one. It clips on my filament stand and has a closed loop you thread the filament through.

This is a effing pain in the arse when I've got everything inside my abs printing box. I have to take the filament out of the print head to un-thread it from the holder.


Click to see full size\


My new design is hardly my own true discovery as I borrowed the helix idea from elsewhere.
The helix is 1.75 turns and to insert or remove the filament all you have to do is turn it sideways and it just comes off. This will save up to a least half an hour of farting about, and if I forget to thread it as I often do, putting it on will be easy.

This is not the only design I considered, a circular torus that doesn't make it all the way around was an obvious choice but didn't meet my "must be as unique as I can make it" philosophy.

Click to embiggen

Naturally it will need testing, but I'm not foreseeing much in the way of problems. The only thing may be, I need to make the turns a bit more so they don't end at half way but more like 3/4 for both ends.



TA DAA


Any concerns are now gone should work like a charm






Skeleton Ukulele er ah update :-)

So........ I'm not a rich man, not even remotely so and I have to wait for paydays to be able to buy any filament or any other 3d printing supplies (or anything at all, for that matter).

I'm also trying to save for my cars registration at the same time.

To print the neck I need some more glow in the dark blue and while the wrong colour glow in the dark blue was replaced (It's about $40.00 aud) I ended up returning the original roll and that cost me another $13.00 so basically a roll of glow in the dark blue, that was still the wrong colour cost me $53.00 + and haven't been able to get any new filament for some time.

On top of that I've been trying to use 3ds Max's loft command to take different shapes that make up the design of a ukulele neck and merge them into a usable model.

I've used loft a long time ago and can still loft one shape to another, but that's the rub, I never really learnt to use more than a couple of shapes and now I need to teach myself how to loft 7 or more shapes. I'm reasonably confident I'll manage to do this eventually. I will look at Blender and Fusion 360 as well to do this.

I've been a little disheartened by the lack of finances for materials and it's made me put the neck on the back burner and deal with things I can do, like the Ukulele Hanger for my music stand.

I do have some pla blue which I've been using for the uke hanger along with some black abs which I'm using for a friend to test the hanger in day to day use. He preferred the black so it wouldn't stand out, something I never even considered.

I've worked in the graphic arts fields since I was 18 and often trying desperately to make things stand out, so I think its fair that I never considered that. Most of the musicians I know would kill for any form of attention whether it is deserved from their lack of any real talent or not lol egos in musicians never hahaha

I'm also printing a new case for my raspberry pi to fill in time.................so I'm not resting on my laurels and wallowing in some depressed state it's just going to take time to get things moving again on the Skeleton Uke. ;-D



Friday 22 July 2016

Ukulele Hanger to suit 10mm post

A friend of mine Derek will be battle testing this 10mm version of the hanger in black abs plastic.

I added, probably unnecessarily, some holes for material saving and don't think I'll be bothering in the future. If I keep them I'll be rotating them so no support structures are within the 45 degree angle I've set in the software. I can change the angle it that will make it use supports from 45 to something else but I don't think it's worth the hassle.












If I decide to make it available as a stl download it will only be from here, so don't expect it to be on any free 3d download sites. 




Thursday 21 July 2016

Uke Hanger Nearly there

Just finalising the design of the Uke hanger I might add some vents for wind resistance but its pretty much done :-)




I replaced the foam self adhesive tape and made it extend outside the hole so it wasn't pushed in on itself when fitting to the stand. Finding a print position was a trial and a standing position seems to be the go. It does leave rough bits where the the printing supports meet the print and are fairly fugly but that's what you get sometimes.






I'm now printing one in black abs for a friend to test drive. This one suits a 10mm stand shaft which will test my guess work (and math lol) on how much room to leave for the tape. Photos later.






There's a small hole in the fork so the more paranoid out there can insert something to prevent it sliding out. (I don't think it ever will but there's humans involved so....)




Wednesday 20 July 2016

Uke hanger improvements

I've made some more improvements to the hanger. I put some recesses on the forks to take some self adhesive 3mm foam so the Uke neck and head arent damaged and wont slip on the slippery pla plastic.

I also enlarged the holes of the piece that fits on the music stand. So rather than a tight fit I left space so some of the self adhesive foam can be stuck to the inside which will hopefully provide grip and prevent the thing from sliding down when weight is applied.

It should also be squishy enough so other sized music stand diameters can be accommodated.



It's printing now so tomorrow we'll know if my calculations are even close.

Due to the sponginess of the foam it may make the forks point down slightly so I may need to go back in and angle the forks up by a few degrees so it compensates for the weight forcing the hanger to point down.







Tuesday 19 July 2016

Ukulele hanger for music stand (Working prototype)

I've been thinking about making a hanger for my ukulele for ages even though I have a couple of well made reasonably priced one here already.
When I found out that this well selling product was no longer being made and remaining stock was sky rocketing from $20.00 AUD to $40.00 AUD I dug out my initial design files and threw this together for 3d printing.

In the first photo I've wrapped and glued some flexible filament around the forks to give it some grip on the uke neck.
I was thinking in the future of trying some of that stuff you dip tool handles in to coat them in a plastic waxy substance often a red colour. https://www.plastidip.net.au/ maybe?



Here's the ORCAS hanger that's no longer being made. The clip can attach itself onto just about anything and swivels from landscape to portrait.









Here are some pic of my design along side the OCAS Ukulele holder

















The forked part of the hanger is removable for transport










Here I'm clipping it onto my music stand which has a diameter of 16mm approx. It's designed to just twist on.








Despite all my attempts to get the fit right when you put the Tenor uke on the forks it can slide down so my simple cure for that is to wrap some black electrical tape around the post just under the clip and it stays in place :-)