A shelf for the empty space above my speakers.

I wanted a shelf there, but I didn’t want to drill into the wall for it. Honestly, I was too lazy to put holes in the wall, so it had to stand on its own.

I also couldn’t decide whether the record player and the amplifier should be stacked or sit side by side, and I wasn’t sure there would be enough clearance for both. So I made the height adjustable, and let the shelf answer that question later.

Most of my furniture is hard and boxy, so I wanted something rounded. It was heavily inspired by Kay Leroy Ruggles’ Umbo Modular Shelf Unit, and I suspect rounded edges are going to keep showing up in what I make.

I modelled it in Fusion 360 as three stacking parts: a base with legs, a middle layer of four rounded cubes, and a tray on top. Adding or removing a layer changes the height. I also made a set of tech sheets, mostly because I wanted to learn how.

A scaled down prototype let me work out the offset tolerances, how much clearance the inserts needed to slot together without being loose. I had friends try the inserts too, pulling them apart and putting them back together, to make sure they weren’t too hard to remove.

Everything was grey at this point. My friends pointed out that the colour didn’t reflect the design or how the piece would be used, so I decided the final one would be green. Then I printed it at real scale and tested it on top of the speakers before starting on the finish.

The columns came out with layer shifts, probably from print speed, and the roof of the model was rough because of poor support settings. I could likely have fixed some of it in the slicer. Instead, I spent the next two months sanding.

And sanding. And sanding.

I had never sanded a 3D print before. Working out what to sand, how much, which grit to use and how to prime it was its own project. I read up on techniques, bought tools and taught myself as I went, waiting to see what each step did before moving on to the next.