Transcript:
Cool sketchbooks. I’ve got a lot of them and one of the things that always bothered Me was the amount of blank pages that were left in all my sketchbooks so today. I’m going to take them all apart and rebind them so that I have each subject in its own sketchbook. The first thing I have to do is dismantle the original sketchbook. I use binder clips to hold together the different sections of my sketchbook. I use the front and back of my sketchbook for two different subjects, so I usually have a bunch of blank pages in the middle once. I’ve got all my pages securely clipped together. I can go ahead and get rid of that metal binding completely. So now I’ve got all these different packets of sketches and I can measure each one to figure out how thick it’s going to be. I use a flatbed scanner to scan one of the pages, so I can have a digital reference that is true to size. Then I can bring that into illustrator and start making some reference lines. I draw a rectangle that matches the size of the page, and I definitely want all of these little holes in my reference. Sketch as well. I trace out that first hole, then I hold Alt and drag that Square down to make a copy at the next hole. Then I use command D or control D in Windows to repeat that action to make all the holes that’s already pretty accurate, but just to make it perfect. I’m going to adjust that last hole, and then I can select all those squares and then use the align function to make them all evenly spaced now. I can select those lines. I drew and export them as a DXF, so I can bring them into SolidWorks. I always make sure the scale is set so that one inch equals one unit because that’s how I have It set up in SolidWorks and the scale has to be perfect for this kind of thing. Now in SolidWorks I can use the insert. Dxf command to bring that sketch in. I usually just eyeball the sketch origin to the center of that sketch so that it’s near the origin of my SolidWorks model. Now I can extrude that sketch to the same thickness as the pad of paper that I’m going to be binding, so this model is now essentially a reference of my pad of paper and I can just build around it to create my binding. I want this binding to look really minimal. Just two rectangles on each side of the page. So I sketch on the surface of my virtual pad of paper and I’ll draw my first rectangle that goes over all the holes. I’ll add dimensions in reference to the pad of paper, so the thin edge of paper all around my binding will be even at first. That right edge was referencing where the perforation on my sketchbook is, but I realized that didn’t really matter, and I decided I’d rather have the rectangle, be perfectly symmetrical in relation to the holes in my spine, so I drew these two little construction lines, selected them both and gave them an equal constraint. I’ll make this binding two millimeters thick, and I offset it 0.1 millimeter from the surface of the sketchbook so that it doesn’t merge into one shape and just so I can make sure that those bodies don’t merge. I color the paper separate from the binding. So now, if I somehow accidentally merge it, I would notice right away. I put some little fillers here because it looks good and then I’ll sketch on the back surface of that same little binding part. I basically just want to make little plastic blocks that go through each of the holes in the spine, and then I’ll have that sandwiched together with another piece of plastic. I can click on my original reference sketch and then convert entities to bring it into this new sketch and Ill. Delete all these outside lines because right now I just want the holes from the binding. I’ll select all of those boxes and then offset them to be 0.2 millimeters smaller so that the paper will fit onto the plastic a little more easily. I’ll extrude that sketch Using the offset from surface option in relation to the top of my pad of paper and offset that upward to point two millimeters, so when all is said and done, the binding will be flush on both sides. I’ll fill it all these blocks and there’s this nice little option to select all the similar edges, and then I’ll start a new sketch on top of one of those blocks in that sketch, I select all the top faces and use the convert entities feature to make them into sketches, then I’ll select those sketches and offset them outward by 0.1 millimeter, then I extrude that downward one point two millimeters to create a little bit of a thicker ledge on the top of these towers. Those are going to help hold things together when everything is done. I’ll go ahead and give those new edges. A point 1 millimeter chamfer, which quite honestly probably won’t make a difference in the physical print. But I don’t know I’m kind of obsessive when it comes to how the model looks now we’re going to start the other side of the binding, so I select this face of the paper and switch to cross-section view, and then I’ll start a new sketch on that face. I want this to be clean and symmetrical, so I just go back to my old sketch and convert it. So the dimensions are the same on both sides. I also give every corner a one millimeter. Fill it to match the other side. Then I select the holes and offset point two millimeters outward. I extrude this sketch and just like on the other side, I give it a point, one millimeter offset and a two millimeter thickness. When I turn off the cross-section view, you can see how everything is nice and flush on this side as well. I’m going to do one more sketch on this face, offsetting the edge of these towers by 0.2 millimeters and then doing a one point two millimeter extrude cut downward. This makes it so the two sides of the binding can really snap together as you can see in this cross-section. I go through and add a few final chamfers that will help the model print cleanly and to come off the build plate. Easier you, that’s all there is to it and the super neat thing about using a parametric software like SolidWorks is I can go back to that very first extrude and change the thickness of my pad of paper. The model will then automatically update, so I can easily make a bunch of different, unique bindings for each size of sketchbook that I have. Here’s the first binding. I print it out. I had to come up with some unique techniques to get the paper on and snapping on that second piece of binding was pretty tough on my thumbs, but the sketchbook does hold together, like, really well, so, of course. I printed a whole bunch more for all the different sketchbooks. I have. I also made this assembly a bit easier on myself by using this vise to clamp the parts together. Oh, and of course, we can’t forget all of that blank paper. We got out of my original sketchbooks. I was able to stack those together and pretty much make brand new sketchbooks again. All right, mission accomplished. How about a round of applause? But seriously, organizing all my sketches was long overdue and I’m super excited that I now have all my different classes separated and color-coded so another big Thanks to 3d printing for making it so easy for me to do this plus. I reused all those blank pages to basically create two brand-new sketchbooks, which is perfect Because I have two more classes before I graduate, so I’ll be using these very shortly. Alright, that’s it for this episode. I hope it was helpful for some of you out there or at the very least entertaining. I’d really love to see some of you. Adapt this tutorial for your own sketchbooks with their own bindings. I think that would only go to show how awesome and versatile It is to 3d print things and to design your own things. So if you do end up doing that, please share it in the comments or some other way, cuz. I’d love to see it, okay, until next time. I’m Devon. This is make anything stay inspired.