Tropical Leaf Cable Organizer
Prototyping a tropical leaf cable organizer using 3D printing as a prototyping method.
Ever since my wireless earbuds went MIA — well, one of the earbuds got run over by a car, but I have no idea what happened to the other — I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed every time I have to untangle my cheaper wired earphones when I want to listen to music. To practice 3D printing as a prototyping method, I designed an earphone wire organizer so I can maintain my calm and listen to music as I am walking between classes.
The ones on the market, such as the dead fish skeleton, are not exactly the trendy shapes I was looking for. Knowing that it would be easiest to wrap my earphone cable around something that had dips in it, I received inspiration from tropical jungle leaves.
I had to think about what shape I would use to cut out of the leaf, which would be used to organize the cable of my earphones.
My sketches show different types of cut outs I could do, in addition to a few other shapes. Ultimately I went with the leaf. If the leaf looked more realistic, having to wrap my earphone cables into diagonal cuts would be a similar struggle to what I had without a cable organizer, and I wouldn’t use it. The cut outs of the fish skeleton, which was effective at organizing cables, influenced me to follow the simple straight dip into the shape. I determined the cost of having my tropical jungle leaf look a little unrealistic to being more effective was worth it.
I modeled the leaf in Rhino. Some requirements I needed to model for were to use the extrude, cut, and revolve tools when 3D modeling it. In my original sketch, I was going to revolve each side of the leaf up so that it would have an indent through the middle, then extrude the stem and cut out the sections that cut into the leaf shape. However, when I revolved the sides of the leaf, it was just the outer edge that was solid. Even after some research on how to revolve so that it was a solid object, I could not make it. In the end, to maintain the requirement of using all three types of modeling, I used revolve for the stem and extrude for the body of the leaf.
Rhino was good for this project, as basic tools were intuitive to learn and use (this is only the second project I have done in Rhino). Additionally, the search bar and instructions on the data points Rhino needed to accomplish the task I was trying to do were helpful. However, it was hard to search how to do things that weren’t intuitive — like filling in the revolve when only the edge was shown.
It was exciting to see my leaf being 3D printed. There were little things I had to do right in order to 3D print it, but once that was set I could just enjoy watching the layers be placed! Someone else was using the green filament, so I used a shiny purple material. The purple color was light and reflective enough to still be seen in dark pockets and bags.
Usability testing with the leaf cable organizer showed that the shape was effective at keeping the cable organized in my pocket. However, if there was a way to hold the ends of it down — where the plug in is, and the actual earbuds — the organizer would be more compact in my pocket without loose ends. The earphone unravels easily, which is good for quickly grabbing them to listen to music. Another design feature I did not think about was how thick the leaf should be. The leaf works for organizing my cable, and it is strong enough for what I want to do with it, but it feels very light. Even though it has not broken after several uses, the fact that it feels like it may is another feature I will have to fix, so that users will not think they are using a flimsy product.
