I always wanted a sheet music holder for my digital piano, but was never really motivated enough to get one.

These days, as I am evaluating how usable xDesign is with purely Mac Trackpad, I finally push myself to make one myself (with only Mac Trackpad of course lol).

And here is : ~

The process:

1. Measure and draft a rough design

After measuring my digital piano and asking the build volume of our printer, I know that I will have to break the whole sheet music holder into small pieces.

But at this point, it is still a bit hard to tell whether all the small pieces will fit into one printer / one batch.

2. Design 

Well as a lazy person, I ended up deciding to just give a rough estimation and make changes as needed when it was time to print. (I did end up having to shrink some parts after finding out there was no way for me to fit all pieces in the 3DWOX app, kind of miss the "PRINT IT" preview feature of A4K at this point lol)

The other piece that I need is something to clip my sheet music to prevent it from falling. 

As someone with little Mechanical design background, I am not familiar with what kind of joints I need.

So I ended up turning to my best friend Google and chose the following snap joints in the link:

https://www.3dhubs.com/knowledge-base/how-design-snap-fit-joints-3d-printing/

I am following their guidances but am still pretty unsure whether or not I get the tolerance right for the joints.

3. Print, assemble...and break it lol 

Unfortunately, after I have all my pieces printed (Special thanks to Fab Lab Intern Nick Zhang who helped me with the print), I quickly realize that my snap joints are a bit too big for the cut-out / slot. And it turns out that brute force will break your print (Duh...)

4. Iterate?

Normally this is time for iteration, but again as a lazy person, what I have kind of works!

It can hold my sheet music so I am calling it "the best Sheet Music Holder ever" : )

Overall it is a super fun journey. Can't wait to start my next project lol!