This week’s selection is the very practical Earhooks by Thingiverse contributor Erick Brown, a.k.a “digitalrice”.
This is a simple design that solves a very annoying problem that almost everyone experiences, yet few people bother to rectify it.
The problem is simply that your loose earbuds tend to fall out of your ears upon the most subtle jostling. Running, for example, with earbuds usually results in multiple earbud reseat operations. It can be quite distracting.
The solution is to use something called an “earhook” that slides overtop of the ear and secures the earbud in place for listening pleasure. Some earbuds are sold with earhooks in place, but many are not. In fact, it’s likely the earbuds you prefer do not, and it’s quite likely you might want an earhook model, but such a thing is not produced by the manufacturer.
Enter the “Final Audio E3000 Earbuds Earhook” by Brown, who worked to resolve this common dilemma. He explains:
Got tired of my Final Audio E3000 buds falling out of my ears. Custom TPU earhooks to the rescue!
These very simple structures include a “trench” into which the wire of the earbud is inserted, to avoid the impossibility of threading the wire through a long flexible tube. The earbud itself sits in a recess at the end of the earhook.
Flexible TPU 3D printer filament is used to print these items, making them suitably flexible to adapt to any ear. However, Brown designed this 3D model specifically for the Final Audio E3000 earbuds, so while the wire may fit in the trench, the earbud itself may not fit within the end cavity.
Thus most readers wishing to make one of these would have to create their own 3D model, but that is almost trivial:
- Draw a spline in the general shape of the hook
- Thicken it
- Subtract a smaller copy of the thickened spline to create the trench
- Add a cylinder with correct diameter to hold your earbud
- Fillet the edges for smoothness
And that’s about it. Enjoy!
Via Thingiverse
