Choir Room Cubby Organizers

Client Request:

This design was requested by Ms. Glenister, the choir teacher at Sharon High School. When moving into the school this year there was not a good organization method provided by the construction company, and this was necessary to speed up the process of students finding folders and beginning class.

Design Choices:

For this design, I wanted something simple that would get the job done while allowing the teacher to shift around the numerical order if they so choose. Originally, I was set on a design that had an insertable slot for paper which would allow for the most amount of customization possible.

This design would contain three main parts, one that clamps onto the cardboard, a piece that clamps onto the cardboard clamp, and then a piece to cover the face that would be holding the paper in place. The images attached were the preliminary sketches, not drawn to any scale. 

After talking through the printing process of this, we opted for a different design that would allow for the same amount of customization while making everyone’s job much easier. 

The new and improved design was a single friction-based piece that slides over the cardboard, with a vertical part that has a numerical engraving. The reason I originally wanted to have the part detachable was so you could move it around easier, but once I thought about it, I realized it would be faster to move the entire piece than just the external part. It also means there’s less that could go wrong and fewer chances that something gets lost. It is incredibly simple but incredibly effective.

This ended up being the final concept, but not the final outcome. As you can see in the image below, the first design was extremely long (and thick). We decided that it wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the design if we cut the length of the attachment part to 25% of its original length, along with shrinking its width to a third of the original. Ultimately it was a waste of filament and time, especially since we are printing 200 parts.

After seeing this model, I was content with the design and was ready to start mass production. With the current model, each piece would perfectly stack on top of itself creating a flush wall of labels. This would look more professional, but it would also cost more than I imagined, even after cutting the length and width down. With that in mind, I decided to cut the height in half as you can see in the image below. Because the height was cut, we were no longer able to fit any arrows on the piece. The arrow was more of a “luxury” and not a necessity, so I’m not concerned about this.

Now onto printing. Originally, we were going to make 200 left and 200 right designs, but after talking to Ms. Glenister, we came to the agreement that fifty in four colors would work as well since she has four sections and none of them have more than fifty cubbies. The cover picture you saw when you clicked on this page are the final design and amounts printed for SHS. 

For Future Notice

When printing the test models, we used an Ender 3. However, when printing the final design we opted to go with our new CR-30 due to its ability to print consistently overnight. There was a slight issue with its calibration, causing the pieces to come out slightly looser than originally intended. The functionality of the piece will be the same, but they may fall out more due to this. In our case, we discussed potentially using hot glue to replicate some of the lost friction, but I would advise printing one and testing its friction prior to mass production.