half-letter/A5 refillable hybrid notebook
Description
I made this "hybrid" notebook inspired by the Kokuyo [2x2 slim binder](https://youtu.be/uz0sOL5spW4?t=157) and ["smart ring" notebook](https://youtu.be/TSQ0UNNqaRg?t=350), as well as [disc-bound notebooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc-binding). Briefly, the Kokuyo products above have very slim, well-engineered latching mechanisms that let you add/remove pages without the bulk of a 3-ring binder. They look great! Disc-bound notebooks meanwhile eschew the mechanics in 3-ring binders and the Kokuyo products in favor of pages with "open" holes, so they pop onto the binding discs with a little deformation. The pages give up a little durability so the binding mechanism has basically no mechanical parts. This notebook takes half-letter (8.5 x 5.5 inches) or A5 pages that have four 1/4 inch or 6 mm holes (depending on your hole punch) punched into them and then cut open using scissors. There's a ridge on each ring to help "guide" the pages into place when popping them in (see photos). In my testing, turning pages is pretty smooth up to about 30-40 individual sheets, depending on how good you are with a holepunch. Redesigning the rings to be slimmer (larger internal radii) might help with this a bit. There's also a holepunch guide to help with that a bit, when using a single hole-punch to make pages. ## Printing and Assembly Tips I printed 4 rings, 1 "spine plate," and 1 holepunch guide. Be sure to check your g-code to make sure the first layer for each ring is smooth - in an earlier iteration with a slimmer first-layer, Slic3r decided it needed to do a wavy first-layer to get good adhesion, but this made the rings too rough for pages to turn properly. I made covers out of a snack box and packing tape. The spine plate is held in place with clear packing tape and stitches around each of the 4 rings to reinforce them a little, although they still wiggle a bit. I pre-punched holes for needle-and-thread using a thumbtack. My prototype also has a paper and packing tape tube at the top for holding a pen or pencil - I thought putting the silo on top instead of the right-side would interfere less with rightys' hands when reaching the edge of a right-side page, and also be less likely to snag on the way into a backpack. For pages, I printed a dot-grid on both sides of 8.5x11 inch (US letter-size) using a conventional laser printer and then cut them in half using a cheap paper cutter, then drew guides for the holes using the stencil and used a single-hole-punch and scissors. I punched about 5 sheets at a time. A couple caveats that come from the disc-bound inspiration: * popping pages in is easier than pulling them out again * when removing sheets, "peel" the page starting from either the top or bottom holes * popping a lot of sheets out at once is also harder * turning a lot of sheets at once isn't as smooth * repeated re-shuffling of pages can leave the holes a little ragged, although I haven't had any fail yet after ~10 rounds of popping around ## A little more background I really like how slim and nice the Kokuyo products above look despite still being refillable notebooks, at least compared with the spiral notebooks and binders with terrible smudgy paper I used in school. I also really like how the 2x2 design is easier for lefties or righties who want to go all the way to the edge of the page, since the rings don't get in the way of your hands as much. I had just a couple problems though: * the 2x2 design doesn't come in sizes smaller than B5 * refills are kinda hard to come by in the USA - there's a lot more Staples locations here than Kinokuniyas * even if I had a compatible hole punch, A5-size paper is uncommon here I've also always thought the disc-binding system was really elegant, with the "open" holes on the pages eliminating the need for complex latches like on a conventional binder. But a couple reasons I didn't want to buy into a discbound system: * all the notebooks I've seen are pretty chonk - I wanted something slim, maybe 1 cm thick * having the rings stick out from the spine of the notebook makes me a little nervous (although [this cover from the "My Little Journal" channel on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzYaFgSCDGs) looks like a lovely solve) * due to slim tolerances between the page slots/holes and the discs, there's supposed to be a special way you have to turn the pages, and I couldn't find an in-person demo to see if I liked that * and of course a disc-bound notebook would require a very specific refills, or a very specific hole-punch
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