Floating Futuristic Headphone Stand Made With AI

Looking for a better place to put your headphones than your monitor or just flat on your desk? With any pair of headphones, a proper stand will extend their lifespan. I wanted to make my own that looked cool with my desk, combining form and function.

I have another instructable about my light desk if you are curious about that.

This cool headphone stand uses tensegrity principles and Fusion 360’s generative modeling.

To make this headphone stand, you will need:

• Black and transparent PLA (Any filament type or color works, this is just what I used).
• Silver gift wrap string (Again, any string should work).
• Super glue.
• Your 3D printer.
• Maybe a piece of sand paper and a sharpie if your 3D printed parts don’t come out perfect.

I printed the hexagon pieces in black PLA at 200 degrees C and 50 mm/s print speed, but your filament and printer may require different settings for best results. I made these myself specifically for my headphones, but you may need to resize the top piece to get it right for your pair.

After those were done, I printed the base in transparent PLA. The one on the left was printed with only one wall and 0% infill at 190 degrees C and 30 mm/s print speed. The one on the right was printed with the same settings as the black hexagons (three walls, 10% infill) but I got lots of stringing with the transparent PLA. As you can see, the left one absorbs the light coming from the desk much better than the one on the right due to the different print settings.

I made both using Fusion 360's generative design tool. I just made six temporary circles where I wanted the legs of the base to rest, selected the faces that I wanted to connect, and clicked ‘generate shapes’. After printing out my two favorite options, I decided on the left one due to the simpler shape.

A little sanding was needed to get a few bumps off of the parts. The black PLA got a bit lighter where I sanded, so I used a sharpie to darken those spots again.

I strung the two hexagonal pieces together with the silver string to make it look like the top piece is floating. To be clear, the top piece is the half-hexagon with the arched top that the headphones will rest on. The bottom piece is the full hexagon that’ll rest on the base.

First you need to put the top piece around the bottom piece. I made a little slit in the top piece for this, which is visible in the CAD model.

Two pieces of string are needed. The first goes in the two holes on either side in the top piece and through the hole in the top of the bottom piece. Simply tie a knot around each hole in the top piece and cut the excess string.

The second string goes through the hole in the bottom of the top piece and through the two small holes in the bottom of the bottom piece. I realize that this may be hard to follow, but hopefully the pictures clear everything up. I used some super glue to help me with these knots. The tighter you get the strings, the less wobbly the floating top piece will be.

The bottom hexagon piece should fit perfectly into the base. Simply super glue them together, and that’s it!