SYSTEM DESIGN // DISPLAY
Modular HueForge Frame System
A modular frame that should connect with almost no thought, tolerate real walls, and avoid tiny loose hardware.
What I’m building
This started as a practical way to hang HueForge artwork without building a completely different frame every time. The deeper goal quickly became a reusable connection standard: frames that can be arranged, rearranged and extended without a special bag of clips for every configuration.
The 200 mm frame itself came out looking great. Then the tiny retaining clips fell off four times in about five minutes. That was enough testing to make the problem obvious: a part can technically work and still be far too fiddly to live with.
What I’ve learned so far
- Open, easy-to-reach rails are a better fit for this idea than tiny loose retaining clips.
- The closed rails made assembly more restrictive than I wanted instead of feeling properly modular.
- If neighbouring frames only line up when every wall screw sits at exactly the same height, the mounting method has created another problem to solve.
- Change one thing at a time when testing, otherwise the next print cannot tell me which change actually helped.
PROJECT SOUNDTRACK
Layer by Layer
For the iterative bit: model it, print it, test it, change it, repeat until the physical object finally agrees with the idea.
Listen on Suno ↗What I’m testing now
- Open the rails end-to-end so frames can slide together more freely.
- Build retention into the frame instead of relying on tiny loose clips.
- Make the wall mount less sensitive to small screw-height differences between neighbouring frames.
- Keep the parts that already print well unchanged while I test the new connection.
Release status
In development — no download yet. The frame quality is promising, but the clip, rail and wall-mount behaviour still need another physical round before this is something I would hand to somebody else.