keyboard clips

I have recently joined a hackerspace, and since i have been wanting to get more into writing, as well as recently purchased an ereader which i have been loving, i decided i wanted to manufacture a pair of clips to attach my e reader to my keyboard for writing usage!

I spent a fair few hours learning freecad, measuring both devices, and creating a cad document of a structure to hold the tablet.

The images of the sketch are of the later iteration 2, i do not have screenshots of iterations 1's sketch

I designed it with the intent to allow the design to bend slightly in order to allow a snapping motion to attach each device. with both snapping points having a slight arc doubling as better cradling the devices curves. I did later discover that i mistook a pair of lines as parallel in the design, but this didn't turn out to be a problem.

After spending some hours at home, i headed out to the hackerspace (for the first time!) and from there i started 3d printing! A massive thanks to hank who spent his time teaching me how to use the printers, and helped to solve problems!
Our first print did fail due to some lifting from the build plate, but the second print went well!

Testing iteration one, i found that the snapping was a bit too hard, and the tolerances a bit too tight on the e reader. To solve this i increased the height of the e reader in the sketch by 1mm, and increased the tolerances from 0.1mm to 0.25mm. I also added a small fillet to the edge faces to prevent elephant footing, as recommend by hank earlier!

The second print i did majority by myself, however the hackerspace's main printer, wanda, seems to have some issues with becoming unlevelled as the bed remains hot and the frame expands. so i had to cancel my print and relevel the bed, but i levelled it a bit too high so the first layer wasn't being printed, with hanks help we once again levelled the bed and printed once again.

The print went pretty smoothly, i did increase the feed rate which looks to have caused some minor delamination but no real issues. The slicer seemed to have also added in some bumps along the longer curve of the clip, i am not entirely sure why, i suspect it was due to the face fillet, but again it didn't cause any issues.

Iteration 2 was a huge success! it successfully clips onto the keyboard, and while it doesn't clip onto the e reader, it does slide along the keyboard so i can slide the e reader in. the effort to clip on and off the keyboard is a bit higher, i think an iteration three would involve decreasing the thickness of both the foot and the spine, but keeping the top of the keyboard clip and bottom of the e reader clip the same thickness. I did also injure myself taking it off the keyboard by breaking a nail pretty badly, but with shorter nails and a bit more consideration it is fine.

With some repeated attaching and detaching of the keyboard, i have noticed some delamination happening, i suspect with a thinner more flexible foot it would not delaminate (as much).

A massive thanks to hank and the whole cchs for being so welcoming and helpful! i hope to attend more meetings! its quite fun and a great way for community engagement!