Catalog of Custom 3D Prints
October 10, 2025
I felt a need to review all the custom CAD projects I’ve done and write up something about them. Many of them are trivial and don’t warrant any online posts or even sharing the models. But I knew I had done many, many of these and I wanted to survey them and look at patterns, skill building, actual utility, etc.
The easiest data I have at hand is my git repo of .FCStd FreeCAD project files. This represents at least 95% of my projects, but will omit a minority of things I’ve done in Fusion, TinkerCAD, or a few other CAD programs.
stats and categories
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225 total designs
-
holders/mounts/racks: 50
-
bushings/washers/clips/etc: 5
-
door related: 16
-
bespoke designs for friends
-
antique wash basin plug
-
mount for speaker on bike…
Catalog of Custom 3D Prints
October 10, 2025
I felt a need to review all the custom CAD projects I’ve done and write up something about them. Many of them are trivial and don’t warrant any online posts or even sharing the models. But I knew I had done many, many of these and I wanted to survey them and look at patterns, skill building, actual utility, etc.
The easiest data I have at hand is my git repo of .FCStd FreeCAD project files. This represents at least 95% of my projects, but will omit a minority of things I’ve done in Fusion, TinkerCAD, or a few other CAD programs.
stats and categories
-
225 total designs
-
holders/mounts/racks: 50
-
bushings/washers/clips/etc: 5
-
door related: 16
-
bespoke designs for friends
-
antique wash basin plug
-
mount for speaker on bike frame
-
replacement chair leg foot
-
rain barrel adapter
-
repairs for major items
-
wheel barrow bushing
-
pergola cotter pin
-
sun umbrella housing
-
bed frame bolt spacer replacement
antique wash basin plug I duplicated
earliest projects
I’m pretty sure the first things I tried to CAD, even before I knew how to use a 3D printer, were belt clips for my everyday carry which I would then bring to the library and have them print them. At the time I had no idea how much skill and effort the slicing and printing process was, and that it was a far cry from “transfer the .stl file to the printer and click print”. I think I also had the library print me some tent posts for my ErgoDox split keyboard.
easy project that was not actually easy
This one for sure goes to a phone holder for my car dashboard. Should be easy, right? Well I iterated on this over the course of 3+ years before both giving up on supporting many phones and just designing it to exactly fit my iPhone 13 Pro, as well as finding online designs that were able to fit a lot more phones with very clever and complex mechanisms.
most ambitious project
SqueezeBox Keyboard for sure.
simplest CAD that’s actually useful
“TP Tube Tube” literally just a cyclinder a bit narrower than a toilet paper tube that acts as an insert and rolls smoothly even if the cardboard tube is crushed and folded into an oval.
most generally useful
Probably the index card holder.
published models
My collection of models is here on printables.com
Things I did not design but found on printables and really like:
The “functional print” subset seems way smaller than the figurines and art pieces subset of the community. A lot of hobbyist designs are just not good. Tolerances are all wrong. Fragile. Way too much material, etc. Many people (heyoo gridfinity) are willing to spend WAY more time/effort/material printing multipart or large systems vs just like tossing stuff into shoe boxes and amazon boxes.