Hello and Welcome!

Hello and Welcome!

My name is John Nicholl. I'm an Industrial Design student, based in Adelaide, South Australia and this is the beginning of somewhere that I can think aloud and share my work.

This blog is somewhat outdated.
More current projects are posted on my website.

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Friday, July 25, 2014

Printing stuff

I bought a 3D printer. Its an Up! Mini, the same as what we've been using at Uni.From all that I looked at, its the best solution for me both in terms of size and price. Hello fast prototypes!

The night I pulled  the printer out of the box and set it up and went about designing a small hook that i could hang my keys off of. My key ring isn't just a boring ring with keys though. I found a neat little product on EBay that have a simple mechanism that allows me to change and rearrange my keys quickly and simply. For me, keeping light pockets is something I strive for, especially since my last good pair of jeans are full of holes that my keys made.



The slider in the middle of the disc unblocks a space for the little pins to slide out and remove whatever  you've got attached to the ring. Mostly I just swap out car or bike keys, but if I'm taking public transport for a night in the town I wouldn't bother with anything but my house keys.

The aim of the design at the beginning was to have a place to store the keys I wasn't using or to hang up the whole lot when I'm home. The most frustrating thing is trying to find my keys, wherever I would throw them down. One thing that remained a constant was the ability to use one of those double sided tape things for wall hooks to hold it up.

The first iteration left the disc hanging loosely and there were some problems with sizes for fitting the pins that held items that were not attached to the disc.



In the second step I had problems fitting the disc onto the interface I designed for it. Also the printer wasn't handling the holes very well.



For the third I added supporting material around the holes and adjusted the shape and size of the interface that held the disc. Also i found that the flat back area that the tape would stick to was intruding on the space needed to slide the pins in. Small cutaways fixed that.



The final design just took a few minor tweaks to get the disc interface to work a little smoother, and then i smacked it on the wall. Best key solution I've ever had.


Some criticisms could be made about the design. The way the unused pins are held so closely together might be hard for some people to manage. There is definitely a smoother way of hanging something on a wall. In fact having just types that I've had a new idea. I'll have to explore that another time and post an update. To contest the argument that the pins are too close, I would say that for something which only plays a small role in my life, it should only consume a small portion of space and also that the angled faces combat the clutter well enough. Hope you like it.

If you're interested in the key ring... Here is a link to the EBay page.

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