To display and hold my guitars, I use a wall mounted rack system similar to that found in music stores. The existing rack uses a slatboard like mounting feature to allow modularity and customization in placement and such. While the long slatboard-like metal extrusion is great for holding the guitars, I feel there is a large amount of unutilized space between the mounts. I like to keep related equipment close together for easy retrievability, so to better maximize the space, I designed a patch cable holder to be attached to the rack to better organize and more easily retrieve a cable at will. The part was designed to be 3D printed and compatible with my existing guitar rack, with size easily adjustable through parametric modeling.
My current setup for storing and displaying my guitars makes for easy retrieval and modular setup. However, my current method of storing patch/audio cables involves coiling them up and laying them on top of each other on top of my amplifier, this is not an elegant or organized solution. The rack system used to mount my guitars leaves a lot of open space for additional mounts, with a large amount of space not being currently utilized.
I want to design a cable holder to mount to the guitar rack to be compatible with the existing slatboard-like extrusions. For easy manufacturing and customization I would like the design to be 3D printable. I will first begin by reverse engineering the original guitar mounts, constructed from bent sheet metal. Once the original geometry has been reconstructed, the design will be modified to be more easily 3D printed, then have the holding arch modeled onto the surface and printed for the final product.
On printing the final model, I had already verified that the major dimensions which connected to the rack were acceptable, therefore in printing the final piece there was only the concern of the arcing geometry of the hanger. But with considerate modeling of the curves there were no sharp overhangs and each layer had adequate overlap to ensure strength in the final print. The final print was oriented on the side as to have the weaker plane be parallel to the expected forces on the body as to not shear the part.
The print had been successful on the first attempt and was robust enough to hold the cables without any deflection, overall quite satisfied with how it had turned out.
At the end of this project I was able to successfully model, prototype, and finalize the design of the rack mounted cable holder. By using small prototype prints to verify geometries before moving onto the final design allowed for rapid iteration between parameter changes. And by use of an equation sheet and parametric modeling, adjustments were able to be quickly implemented with minimal work to redesign the model other than changing a number in a spreadsheet.
This project was a good exercise in reverse engineering existing components and then modifying the design to accompany different forms of manufacturing, as well as an exercise in rapid prototyping and development. For future updates I would like to create multiple widths of brackets, as well as use the base bracket geometry to design other components to mount to the guitar rack.