Hat Clip

There is a huge problem. I have no idea where my pencil went. I was writing something and then I looked up and then it was gone, but never fear the hat clip is here! This clip is designed to secure itself to any hat and can be re designed to fit anything.

To make this hat clip all you need is filament and a 3d printer or a plastic block and sheer will. Optional: CAD (For this design I used Fusion 360)

To start I know that I needed to basically make a coupler or an adapter from pencil to hat . So I started thinking, pencils are basically round and the brim of a hat is basically flat so just like an adapter I put round and flat together on opposite sides. I figured that I would measure a standard pencil which came out to be 0.3 inches. Inputting this into cad I came up with this first sketch. Puting it through a simulation I found that it acted like a clothespin gripping the pencil in place when it was put on to the hat. while this sounds like a pro, but it was a big problem. If you were to put the clip on the hat then the pencil the opening would be too tight to fit the pencil through.

To combat the clothespin effect, I made the outer walls thicker and the gap in the hat portion of the clip smaller. It was a small adjustment to be made, but I figured that the thicker walls would stop the mouth of the clip from closing. This did not work. Even in the simulation, I could not find out what was wrong (because there is no apparent stress; That is why it is all blue). Then it came to me. In the simulation, I was locking the entire mouth, acting as if it were holding a pencil. later, I chose to put a constraint on just the hinge.

As you may notice there have been some slight changes. It may look very complicated but the only changes I have made from the last design is deepend the relief cuts and exaggerated the mouth flare to guide the pencil in easier. In this version it is doing exactly what I want it to. In the image where the clip is blue the different colors indicate the stress on the part or the "safety factor", a blue safety factor means that there is no stress in that particular area. A green safety factor means that there is little stress, yellow means more stress, and so on and so forth. This is good for the design because it means that it is bending where the relief cuts are and nowhere else.

Now You can 3d print or start carving away! The fusion files and STL's are linked to the supplies list (Feel free to edit or modify this file in any way!)

Now what would I do next? I think that I would design a compact version so it can fit in tighter spaces. also, I would make one with a perpendicular flat face top to be glued onto a helmet or have a magnet embedded. One last thing I would do is make a larger one for markers and larger writing utensils.