3D Printed Citadel Paints Holders

3D Printed Citadel Paints Holder

This is a quick post about an Overly complicated folding Citadel paint rack I found and printed from Thingiverse to store the paints I use to paint my miniatures.

I found this design and thought it was absolutely perfect for what I needed: a way to nicely display my paints while I’m painting my board game miniatures and a good storage solution to neatly pack them away when I’m done - this ticked both those boxes and had a nice bonus of learning a new technique; heat set inserts!

I first test printed the 3-pot version to make sure the sizing was correct and to have a chance to practise the heat set inserts.

Test print 3 pots - front

Perfect fit! I printed with optimal settings (0.15mm layer height) in PLA which gave a nice finish including on the back.

Test print 3 pots - back

After the test print I went ahead with printing the 5-pot heat-set-insert versions.

I used heat set insert tips similar to these on Adafruit attached to the end of my spare soldering iron to properly seat the inserts. I found the technique of affixing the iron securely and moving the plastic piece up into the heating element (as opposed to pushing the iron down into the plastic) gave me the straightest result.

I printed these in the middle of a lockdown here in Melbourne so I was a little light on the in-progress shots, but here’s nice ones of the completed product.

Done!

The total print time was just under 37 hours and used approximately 300g of PLA filament. I then printed a second one (which is why I was particularly impressed with the stackable design) because I seem to have a ridiculous number of paints.

Both paint holders

Here is a nice demo of how they fold and stack.

Folded and stacked holders

…And fit so nicely in this box!

Both holders packed neatly in a box

Now I have no excuses not to continue painting my minis…


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Engineer, maker, do-er...
I basically just like to make things.

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