Monitor Pole Mic Arm Adaptor

Finally got around to printing the tweaked design myself with South London Makerspace's Ultimaker 2, with some Filamentive Recylced PLA in glorious Makerspace red (well, some kind of red anyway!)

Here’s the Ultimaker, making away, at 25% infill.

Couple hours later, out comes a finished part!

Although it’s not obvious, the top (which was face down) flared out a bit. Barely perceptible.

Looks good! And once I got it home, it’s only gone and worked perfectly!

Works a charm, and the smooth finish of this filament means the arm swings from side to side with no effort at all.  The lip over the edge stops it from rattling as well.  

Success!

 I’ve done a bit of podcasting and stuff in the past, and as such I have a reasonably nice USB condenser mic on a cheap anglepoise style arm. However, putting this on my desk in a position that does not get in the way is a bit challenging.

I also have a cheap monitor arm, which I have got mounted to my desk. The pole is just a 28mm diameter hollow pole with a plug in the end. I thought, why not remove said plug and attach the mic arm into that? I prototyped the solution by wrapping the end of the mic arm in quite a lot of card, and the solution worked pretty well!

So I threw together something in Fusion 360 which would go into the monitor pole, and hold the mic arm:

And then I went via 3D Hubs to get someone to print it for me, as I didn’t have any filament to hand myself, and wanted to try it in ABS.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken into account the shrinkage, and the fit on the mic arm was much too tight (even after drilling it out, it was very much press fit), and the fit on the monitor pole was very loose. 

So I redesigned it, and removed a fair amount of material to make it a bit more thrifty to produce, whilst hopefully retaining it’s structural abilities!  The lip over the edge should also help gently grip the pole to make sure only one part moved when I want to move the arm around. 

I will be printing this in PLA on the South London Makerspace Ultimaker 2 when I get the time