Pencil Holder for Ear

Hello, I'm Kaelan, and I go to Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California.

Moving around in a shop, it's always necessary to have a pen or pencil in hand to make a quick marking for a measurement, draw a sketch to clarify your ideas, or just wave around for dramatic effect when explaining your thought process. My teacher always carries one in her mask, but it tends to fall out, so I was inspired to make her an unfailing device to hold her pencils with easy access.

However, with this easily customizable 3D printed design, you can augment the final product to hold any brand of writing utensil, or even just to hold the wire of a set of earbuds. I myself made mine for a particular brand of pen that I like.

• Autodesk Fusion 360
• 3D Printer
• 3D Printer Filament (Enough for the size of your object)

Most of the steps of this instructable will use Fusion 360, so go ahead and open it.

Before you start designing, I recommend doing a few things: First, take precise measurements of your ear from the top and bottom of where it attaches to your head. Fusion 360 allows you to upload a photo into your workspace. Take a photo of your ear, import it into your workspace, and scale the photo to the measurements. you just took.

Now that you have a properly scaled image, make a sketch on the same plane as the photo, using it as a reference. You're trying to outline around the part of the ear that you measured, the skin connecting your ear and head. It's more important to make the arc smooth and continuous than incredibly precise to the shape of your ear. In these photos, I show a stock photo of an ear imported into my workspace as well as the path I drew around it.

During this step, I would also take a measurement of your pencil, pen, headphone wire, or whatever else this holder is for so you have an idea of what you'll be working with.

Once you have a path showing the outline of your ear, you can suppress the image of your ear, you don't need it anymore. Now, we want to extrude this path in some way so we have a way for our object to hang onto our ear. To do this, we will make use of the sweep feature.

Make an offset plane perpendicular to the plane with your path on it, and offset it to one of the ends of your path (photo 1). Making custom planes is a very powerful tool, and we will make use of it more than once.

Make a sketch on your new plane, and design a shape to extrude along the path you've made (photo 2). You are trying to create a shape that will fit comfortably in your ear, but that is wide enough to hold your pencil or pen of choice. You can always edit this path later if it doesn't turn out too well in the later steps. You can see my sample in the second photo above.

Finally, use the sweep feature to extrude the face you just created along your path (photo 3). Congratulations, you've made the first of three domains of this object!

Next, we are going to design the second domain of this object: the base of the pencil sheath.

Make an angled plane from the topmost line of your design, and slope it at the angle you like (it's easiest if it's less than 20 degrees), making sure it doesn't intersect with your previous sweep feature (photo 1). I chose a slightly downward slope and it worked well.

Next, make a sketch on this plane that stays within the bounds of your sweep feature to be well supported by your sweep feature (photo 2). I used the project feature in Fusion to precisely match my ear holder, I would recommend doing the same. Make sure to also make your base big enough to easily support your pencil.

Now, extrude your face downward, joining it with your sweep feature (photo 3). You can use the "to object" definition for distance instead of a constant to ensure it perfectly lines up with your sweep.

Now, you are going to design the final domain of this object: your pencil sheath.

Extend your base upward an apt distance for your sheath (more than the diameter of your pencil), and make a new sketch on the front face of your base.

On this sketch, create a circle with a diameter equal to the diameter of your pencil that you measured in Step 1 (photo 2). A standard pencil has a diameter of 6mm-7mm.

Once you have the sketch, use the "cut" extrude option to cut the circle out of your design. Alternatively, you can use the Hole feature in the Create bar (photo 2).

In my design, you can see that I placed the hole overlapping with the edge of my base. This is because I wanted my pen to snap in and out of my object from the side instead of sliding in and out from the front. This also had the added benefit of leaving one flat face of my object for ease of printing. I recommend this method of design, although you don't have to do it this way.

This step is fairly straightforward.

Remove any excess material you don't want in your final design using well-placed sketches and cuts.

Finally, use the fillet tool to fillet every side a minimal amount (I did 0.025 inches to 0.03 inches of fillet for most of my sides). This adds to the ergonomics of the object, making it fit into your ear nicer, but more importantly, this will avoid cutting the side of your head with any sharp sides. It also has the added benefit of making the object look a lot more shapely and elegant. When you're all done, check your measurements one more time, you'll thank me later. If you want to embellish your design at all, I would do it during this step.

Finally, you just have to slice your design in preparation for your 3D print. We could export it, but lucky for us, Fusion 360 has a built-in slice feature under the Manufacture menu, so we don't even have to leave our program. Select the first option under Manufacture>Additive>Setup, select your printer, and follow the steps laid out for you to prepare your print. Make sure to lay your object on the right side to minimize use of extra material for scaffolding, as well as to minimize printing errors.

All you have to do then is print your object in a nice color, and try it out!

Congratulations on your custom-designed pencil sheath!