Rotating Desk Organizer

thingiverse

This is a rotating desk organizer I designed for the Student Virtual Prototyping Design Challenge. I put a lot of hard work into this desk organizer, as I'm sure everyone else in this challenge is. Along the way I came across many challenges, a very significant challenge that I encountered was creating the various pen holders that line the sort of spire. I ended up using Blender's array modifier in order to create several symmetrical versions of the same object which lined the spire. There isn't much I would do to redesign my desk organizer other than finding a way to better support the pen holders. I worry that they may fall apart during printing, and as I cannot simulate real life 3d printing physics in any engine (that I know of) I have no way of knowing if my print has a "structurally sound " design. Another concern I have with my design is the ball bearings which are supposed to spin the pen holder spire. I have no way of even knowing if they will function properly, as I cannot 3d print them to test them. I believe that if I had a 3D printer I would be able to make improve and perfect both the structural integrity of the pen holders and the usability of my ball bearing design, as well as furthering my understanding of not only the physical capabilities of a 3D printer, but how I can use its current limitations in order to use it to it's maximum potential. I understand that we were only supposed to write 3-5 sentences, but I had a lot more that I wanted to say about my model than I could fit within only 3-5 sentences. I have written a much more in-depth version of my analysis to this project in the "How I designed this" module. I would like to thank Makerbot for this opportunity.