I’ve written several posts since I built my Makerbot about how awesome a service Thingiverse is. It’s a place to find, share and edit 3D printable designs. Nearly all the models on Thingiverse include source files for editing and making modifications. While I know how cool it is, for some reason I’ve never done this. I’ve downloaded more than my fair share of models to print at home, and uploaded a few to share. But I’ve never found a design I felt I could improve apon. That is, until today.
I picked up my first money clip earlier this week as I was growing tired of my ever increasing “Costanza Wallet“. The clip I bought is secured with a magnet and while it worked, it severly limited the number of cards/cash I was able to carry. The magnet is just too weak to hold more than two or three cards and minimal paper money. Having just spent a cool $9 for this fine faux leather magnetic model I thought I’d look into a cheaper alternative. Makerbot.
I didn’t have much experience in the subject of money clips but I knew where to look. One Thingiverse search later I was staring at a money clip designed by none-other than the Makerbot Industries man himself, Bre Pettis. Naturally I pulled down his STL and Google Sketchup files and gave it a print. Unfortunettly something just wasn’t right. It’s a mixture of the shape, the ability to grip cards and the overall chunkiness that just doesn’t sit right with me (or rather, I don’t sit right on it). Thankfully for me Bre uploaded the Sketchup source file which made modifications a breeze. You can see the evolution the clip took to get to what is (for me) the perfect money clip.
I started with Bre’s design (v1) and edited the height and added flared edges to make it easier to put cards and cash into the empty clip (v2). Then I lowered the height and angled the top half in to allow holding just a few cards (for the end of the night) while still providing a good grip (v3).
Being able to pull down an existing design really saved me the trouble of researching commercially made products on Google Image Search and other online retailers. It was a lot easier to make corrections to an existing design than it would have been to start from scratch. I’ve uploaded my modified money clip and hope to see someone refine it even further into their perfect clip. If anyone can, it’s the Thingiverse community.
[thingiverse thing=9901]
