Design of the Week: One Hand Book Holder

This week’s selection is the One Hand Book Holder by Daniel Gross.

This is perhaps the simplest item ever selected as our Design of the Week, yet it is incredibly practical and actually quite inspiring for other projects.

The idea of this object is as a simple finger aid to splay open a paperback book when held, allowing the pages to be more easily read. Sure, your own human finger can do this, but it’s a lot easier when there’s a physical aid like the One Hand Book Holder.

As the object’s title suggests, the book can be near-fully open using the Holder, even with only one hand. For some misbehaving books, this could be extremely useful, particularly longer tomes requiring you to hold them open for long sessions.

This object is so simple in design it was actually delivered to Thingiverse by Gross as a CNC / Machinable object, rather than a 3D printable object. On the Thingiverse page you will find the files necessary for laser cutting, such as the .DXF file.

Fortunately, Gross also included a .STL file that is eminently 3D printable. Our version looks like this:

There’s one issue with the design, however. There is an assumption of the diameter of your thumb. For most people the default size will be sufficient. However, for others, there may be an issue, as occurred with 3D printer operator The_stupid_engineer, who says:

“Put my thumb all the way in while joking with a friend, had to separate the part into clumps of layers and cut each clump separately with a scissor to get it off my thumb, it also began swelling a bit (the thumb, not the part).

I am serious.

It was hilarious.

10/10, I am printing one again.

Printed in PETG, layer height 0.2, wall thickness 0.8 (thank god).”

Thus there is a word of warning to those who might 3D print this object: test the size first, and if too small, simply resize it before 3D printing. We don’t want any thumbs mangled!

Finally, there is an inspirational thought about this design. If you think about it, this is actually a kind of “extension” of the human thumb. When in use it is like part of your body.

Now imagine what other kinds of body extensions you might find useful in many situations. I think we could have another useful niche for 3D printing applications here.

Via Thingiverse