Copic Marker Pen Classic "Pen Holder Organizer"

I'm a 2nd-year student at The Open university in the UK and I'm studying Design Engineering.

As I was getting into the back-to-school mood, I was trying to sort my pens and pencils and getting rid of ones that I no longer used or needed to be binned. I had several pen and pencil storage like pencil cases but I was fed up with trying to find the exact colour I needed and/or wanted to use at that point in time. I quickly found out that I was spending way too much time looking for a certain colour and less time on creative work. So!.... I decided to look online for tabletop storage or even hanging it on the wall storage, I found some good examples of what I wanted but it wasn't ideal for me as I don't have a big collection yet so most of it would be empty and it wouldn't look great visually.

So I decide to have a go at creating one myself using Fusion360. I designed my storage system that is modular and can even be the same colour as the pen you are storing. It is compromised of 3 items (the pen holder - A long square extruded to a certain length of the pen itself), (the connecting piece - like a puzzle piece that connects other pen holders) & (the edge piece - a piece to surround the edge, again like the edge pieces of puzzles)

This Marker holder only applies to the classic type of Copic markers but the internal measurements can be changed to suit the other types of Copic markers that they supply.

The materials needed for this project include the following:

1. 3D Printer

2. Any coloured 3D printer filament of your choice

3. Fusion 360 (not Needed if you're going to print my ones but if you want to edit and play around then you'll need it).

Here are some images of what I found when looking for the perfect storage, ideally I would like it on the wall to save desktop space but I think I need to refine my idea a bit more for that. my design uses inspiration from these but it is different due to making it to suit your needs

The primary audience for the storage system is students but in reality, it's for anyone pursuing art & design or a hobbyist that loves to draw and have the markers stored neatly in place.

Image 1: All 3 pieces together.

Image 2: Inter-connecting piece

Image 3: Pen holder with the edge piece

Here are the attached files for the Copic marker storage solution plus all the connecting pieces. They're .stl files for all of them, but I also included the .f3d file for the whole project if you have any other ideas you may want to explore

Unfortunately, I don't have a 3D printer(YET!, waiting for it to be in stock.) to check the fitting and dimensions, which would have been better so I would take 0.5 to 1mm from the connecting pieces to count for that. so instead I have made a video to show the installation procedure.

So as you can see here, I mentioned I wanted it to be modular so you can make it any shape you wish, you can even go over the top and make a stick man like shown in the picture. this is something my competitors and market research do not have and that I think gives me an edge over them.

Am I happy with what I achieved? yes.

Could it be improved over time? 110% yes.

Would I have written a more detailed piece if I had a 3D printer? Affirmative.

I am happy with how the design turned out, the main goal for this was to be able to mount it to the wall, and I'm still working on that design so it has the strength t hold all the markers and be stable at the same time, maybe that will be for another Instructable in the near future, hey! I might even have my 3D printer by then.

I think I will be going through the design and doing some iterations and trying and improve it slightly once I have the 3D printer as I think there is a lot of potential in this idea in terms of customization.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know below. Thanks!