Objective:

Design a weighted stylus stand with the potential to be manufactured at scale. 

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Skills and Tools Used:

• Fusion 360

• Package/Die Design

• DFM/DFA

• Material Research and Selection

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Notable Features:

• Main structure designed for double-shot injection molding

• TPU base perimeter for premium non-slip feel

• Weighted base for low center of mass

• Simple packaging immediately displays product

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Details:

I acquired a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet for all my digital sketching needs and quickly realized that I was misplacing the stylus on my own desk constantly. My solution? A stand!

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I knew I wanted the stylus holder to be stylish, so I experimented with Fusion 360's form and patch tool sets before going the low-polygon route. 

 

Initially this was attempted by taking a T-spline surface and using the flatten command to make the hard facets you see in the model. I found this difficult to control, and decided to instead make a smooth model to be converted to a mesh.  The mesh tools were then used to reduce the polygon count until I had what looked like a boulder straight out of the resources of an N64 game.

 

At this point the model was good enough to be 3D printed, but I decided to follow this up with some design optimizations for actual production. I turned the model into an injection-moldable shell of constant width. 

 

In its current state, the mold tooling would have some complexity, most likely in the form of lifters, for the undercuts caused by the cutout for the stylus itself.  This could have been avoided by angling the stylus normal to the surface it's placed on

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To bring it closer to the look and feel of a premium product, I added an elastomeric feature to the underside of the plastic's perimeter for grip. The intent was to optimize the mating surface of the two parts such that it could be produced with 2-shot molding. The bottom cover was to be made of a relatively thick gauge of steel for weight.

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Finally, I designed a custom box using Fusion 360's sheet metal tools. The method is a bit unorthodox, but it allows me to build a custom dieline without any software specific to package design. As I get better with my digital sketching I'll look at adding some nice graphics to the box.