This week’s session entailed printing our initial prototype of our earphone clips and receiving feedback from fellow classmates through a design audit. I was simultaneously excited and nervous to see if our print would be successful, considering that we had to model it in a relatively short amount of time. We used Fusion360 to create the initial design and I’ve included a photo of the first iteration here.
The earphone clips were roughly a 20-minute print, so we are now focused on marketing this as an experience for students to easily participate in. One point of feedback we received from Vishal was to utilize some photo measurement mobile application that would allow users to send us a photo of their ear, and then we could automatically use the measurements from the app to determine what size clips they would need. We were able to find an app called Ruler that allows users to take pictures of various objects and then compare them to the scale of various objects like credit cards or US quarters to determine the actual dimensions of the object. We are still testing the accuracy of this app across various conditions, but if it proves to be successful, it would be a great way for students to print their ear clips without needing to set foot in the MakerLab.
I was quite happy with the first version of our ear clips. Here is what they looked like on my teammate Jason, who was busy at work. They were surprisingly flexible, so we agreed to increase the nozzle size (from 0.4 to 0.6) as well as the layer height to make the final product more durable. Through our design audit with various other teams, we also received the feedback to make the clip-on portion of the product tighter so that it won’t slide off of the earphones. We are also looking into creating clips that will work for non-iPhone earphones, given that our base design worked quite well. I’m looking forward to tweaking our model some more, and testing our prototype with various volunteers over the weekend—I’ll be sure to provide updates as it all starts to come together!
Hey Ria- I have to say, I didn’t really understand what you and your team meant by headphone clips at first, but now that I have seen the pictures, I think this is genius. I’m very impressed that, after having to scrap your initial idea, you came up with such a great one and that your team was able to execute it so quickly! I would definitely like to purchase this product or print my own if possible.
Hi Ria,
That is awesome that your earphone clip only took 20 minutes to print! That makes me think about all of the on-demand capabilities of your prototype—like at a kiosk stand at a mall whenever consumers need to have a more custom fit. I wanted to note that if you use a bigger nozzle size then this print may even take less time to print! For instnce, if you used a .4 nozzle printer before, then using a .8 nozzle printer will definitely decrease this time even more—which could make a big difference for eager end-users.
-Scott Provenzano