Introduction: Piano Tie (with Tinkercad)

Love ties then you will love this piano tie, go ahead edit and tinker with the design, you could always incorporate electronics and sound. Throughout the instruction I have measured the size in millimetres as (HxLxW)

Link to 3D model
https://www.tinkercad.com/embed/0xW6yzzWrZd

Link to tinker and edit
https://www.tinkercad.com/things/0xW6yzzWrZd

Supplies

- Computer (Tinkercad account)
- Paper, pen and pencil

Step 1: Tinkercad and Shapes

To create this project I used Tinkercad using 2 “basic shapes”, the “box” (cube shape) and the cylinder shape to make the tie.

Yup literally two shapes!

Step 2: Plan

So the tie I want is approximately 420mm in height and 70mm in width, since I wanted a piano tie I wanted the design to be 3D so I wanted the knot to be 16mm width and the rest of they white and black piano keys 8mm in thickness. I made sure each black and white keys had at least 1mm gap so it’s not prone to wear and tear.

*i sketched the basics of what I wanted my tie to look like and how I will separate each component.
The tie is split in 4 components, black keys, white keys, knot and the dowel which holds the keys and the knot together.

Step 3: Knot

To keep things simple i used the “box” shape which is a cube to make the knot.

Outer measurements for knot
16*50*30

To make the inner measurements make a 10*44*20 solid cube, turn it into a “hole”and place it on the midpoint on the x and y axis.

Measurements for the dowel and dowel hole.
4mm in diameter and 60mm length.

Step 4: Shaping the Tie

To make the tie shape (white and black piano keys), make the “box” 8*70*347. From the orange segment (top of tie) insert a cylindrical shape with 4mm diameter through to both ends of the orange segment from the midpoint.

Make another “box” and place it on top of the keys with a 4 degree angle from 10mm below the orange segment from top left to the bottom left and top right to bottom right (of the purple segment), to make a irregular rectangle.

To make the pointy tip (green segment) of the tie we will have to make a 8*70*40 shape with a 85 degree angle inside the triangle and the outer 2 equal angles 47.5 on either side.

*NOTE all angles in a triangle equal 180.

Step 5: Making the Piano Keys

Now make a duplicate copy of the whole tie (the irregular rectangle). On the orange segment, 10mm below the top edge make a 10*10*45mm black key, for the other 6 black keys make them 10*20*45.

*we left a 10mm gap on the orange segment so that part of the 1st segment can be held together inside the knot by a 4mm diameter dowel with a length of 50mm.

Below the 1st black key then place the white key (8*70*50) then leave a gap of 1mm and place the 2nd black key (10*45*20) repeat this pattern till the last black key...

After placing the last black key and then place a 8*70*10 white key followed by the last green segment (8*70*40)

Step 6: Plans for Assembly

To later keep the segments in place we will need to add a 4mm diameter dowel through the top of the 1st segment (orange segment), through the last segment (green segment) approx 450mm long at 1 degree angle on each side and hollow it out to make a hole to later we could feed the string through.

Step 7: Fin

I have yet to 3D print it when I get a 3D printer, for now I am really happy that I was able to understand how easy and simple Tinkercad is to model designs within minutes. I might add some music and definitely some cool lighting inside the white keys, if you have any ideas please let me know, I am all ears.