Either as a last-minute gift or as a practical test object for the 3D printer you just received: These seven projects can be printed in a few hours and then used sensibly in everyday life.
Our criteria for selecting projects:
- Fast print time. After all, Christmas is on December 24th this year, that’s soon.
- Just a push. Switch on, wait, take the finished gift out of the printer.
- Practical projects only! Nobody wants dust collectors from the 3D printer.
All projects are from Thingiverse, you can find the links in the description of the video on Youtube.
transcript of the video
(Note: This is bonus content for people who cannot or do not want to watch the video above. The video track information is not reflected in the transcript.)
In this video I show you seven cool projects that you can print with the 3D printer. Have fun!
Somehow you’re always way too late anyway and if you have a 3D printer at home, you can still print out really cool things in a hurry, which you can then give away. That’s why I’ve picked out seven projects for you in this video that I’ve printed out again and again lately because friends or acquaintances saw the things I had and said they’d like them too.
My criteria for these seven things are the following: First, the whole thing has to print quickly. So it can’t be that you somehow have to print 10, 15 or 20 hours, but two, three or four hours at most per project. Then it should consist of only a single part or only a single print. That means you turn on the printer once, wait a few hours and take the finished gift out of the printer. Nothing where you have to assemble or put something together afterwards or maybe start several printing processes with a few hours offset. The next criterion is that things should be practical, because we all have enough things that just stand around and from the 3D printer they are often not even really nice. So they should be practical, not just standing around and just catching dust. My last criterion is of course quite subjective, but I think the projects are cool, I like them and I find them useful. I would be happy if someone gave me these things.
Let’s start with project number one. I don’t know of any household that doesn’t have a screw leftover box, things left over from some Ikea shelf, screws that you bought for a project and then there were two too many. It all ends up in the same old cookie jar. Yes, and when you need a screw, you open this box. Yes, and somehow you still can’t find anything, there are a lot of screws in there, but what size and diameter are they and whether they fit what you want to do? I have this little helper for that, it can simply be put in the cookie jar and you can use it to measure two things.
First of all, you can use it to find out how long the screw actually is, and of course you can also see whether it is, for example, as long as a screw that I already have in my project. You can also use it to measure the diameter of screws. You can simply press them into these small recesses on the side. You can then read the diameter where the screw fits exactly. The whole thing becomes a bit more legible if you paint the fonts with a black or white pen, but even so it is a great helper. As I said, just throw them in the cookie jar with the screws and you don’t have to start looking for a caliper or a meter rule.
The second project are these little storage boxes and they are just the right size to put those bags of baking ingredients in. Now you can simply stick them in a cupboard door, these 3 cm, which is thick, are normally not used on the inside of the cupboard door anyway. Yes, and you already have a little helper for the kitchen, because to be honest: I think these little bags of baking ingredients that just fly around in everyone’s drawer somewhere. Yes, and if they are simply hung on the cupboard door on the inside, you can find them more quickly, they are neatly sorted and you can leaf through them.
The next project is this oversized screw head. This is a scan of a real drywall screw and of course you can’t screw anything with it, but here on the inside there’s a cutout for a regular sized real screw so you can just hang the whole thing on the wall. Yes, and then you have a rather unusual coat hook. Here it is definitely a good idea to color the whole thing up a bit. For example, you could just paint it black, like a drywall screw, or maybe paint it rusty in some way or do something similar with it.
The next project, I think, is what I’ve actually had to reprint the most, because the ones I printed for myself left with the Sunday visit. These are these little battery drink holder boxes that look like a normal water crate that you get in the beverage trade, but are tailored for batteries. They come in many different sizes, this one is for 2A batteries, I also have 3A batteries and button cells. But there are also suitable beverage crates for 9-volt blocks and so on.
In the meantime, I have also printed out a small supply of these boxes, which means that if someone is visiting me, they are welcome to take a stack with them. The next project also has to do with storing batteries again and that is this handy battery stand that is only suitable for 3A and 2A batteries. You can simply throw the batteries in at the top and take them out individually at the bottom, which means that the next batteries always slide down. Technically, however, this holder takes a little longer to print than the other projects.
I wouldn’t want to be without this little memory card holder anymore, I printed it out on my very first 3D printer as one of the first projects. There are now versions in which you can also insert USB sticks and micro SD cards, and there are probably already versions with USB-C ports. I might make my own version with more SD card slots and fewer micro SD card slots, but it’s a super handy holder for anyone who works with Raspis a lot and therefore messes around with memory cards a lot, or just a lot with cameras and the memory cards that you need for the cameras. Just give this helper away to someone who will surely be happy about it.
The next project is a bit more difficult to print on an FDM printer (i.e. fused-depositing), but if you have a resin printer, you might be interested in these little miniature euroboxes. If all of this sounds familiar to you, that’s because these boxes are originally 40 x 60 cm. They are available in a wide variety of designs with latticed sides or, like this one, completely closed. There are also grid sides and closed floors. Anyway, these boxes are of course meant to store stuff, and you can do the same with these miniature versions as well. I often have bits and pieces in there from whatever project I’m doing, such as individual screws, magnets or screws for tripod threads – I have stuff like that in there.
What I find particularly cool about the boxes is that they can be stacked and nested and you can easily place several of them on top of each other somewhere to store small parts that are for a project and that need to be further processed. For example, if you have someone in the family who likes to sew and therefore has little buttons, these little boxes are actually pretty cool because stuff like that fits in perfectly. And because I thought the boxes were so cool, I have now printed them out one size larger and I like to dry things in them because they have a grid base and you can simply stack them and put them anywhere. A little tip: pudding packs also fit exactly into it. Somehow this channel is all about food all the time.
Those were my seven tips for quickly printed, last-minute gift ideas. I wish you a lot of fun with printing, a lot of fun with handicrafts and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Bye!
()
