Functional Print: Soldering wire holder

This was a super quick CAD modelling and print exercise for one of my colleagues who wanted his soldering wire stored in a little tube because that is how he is used to using it. This is one of those instances where sure there are cheap commercially available products but in this instance the time from request to receiving the ready to use part was around 2 hours It’s a great example of a quick functional print! Print cost £0.19.

If you want to print one yourself I’ve uploaded it to my Prusa Printers collection here

The design is really simple. It is an extruded tube that is then hollowed out and a small cap with tight enough tolerances to be a tight fit when pushed into the tube. All in about 5 minutes of time spent in CAD.

The print orientation is pretty obvious. Pick the largest flat surface on both parts and go from there. Layer height doesn’t really matter but 0.3mm will print faster.

Here is a timelapse of the print!

I printed it in ESun matte PLA. Mostly because it was a cute colour and because I had it to hand. The only thing worth noting here is that when using something like ABS that has more shrinkage you may need to scale the size of the tube to 103% to achieve the same fit!