Every part of my coffee gear fits nicely on my coffee tray, except for my Hario coffee filters.

It bothers me to the point that I 3D designed a custom holder for them. Here's the result below:

Below, I go through my process to get it done.

3D design

After measuring the size of my coffee filters (10cm x 10cm), I prepared a simple square holder around it using Sketchup. Then I exported the 3D Geometry for the holder as a TLS file, for use in 3D printing. Took me 30 minutes, neat.



Printing via mainstream online services

Now I just had to figure out a place to print it. I tried PrintAThing, but they quoted me $174 to print an 11.5cm wide by 5cm high piece, which feels excessive. Similar thing with Shapeways, who quoted me $47.45 to print on PA12 plastic, and $84.54 to make it red, matching my coffee stuff. Feels like I needed to go down a level.



Printing locally, myself

The whole point of 3D printers is you can print stuff in your local “lab”, so I looked to sign up for one. However, you can’t just print a piece there — you need to join a new lifestyle, following a 1.5 hour onboarding session (next one in 2 weeks), and shelling out €59 / month. To which I assume I’d need to add the unknown price of the materials. That sounds like a fun learning experience, but I didn't want to wait 2 weeks and invest hours just to know what my piece could look like.

Printing locally from local companies

My next move was figuring out if companies established locally could quickly print and deliver my piece, or let me collect it. Google lead me to treatstock.com, which lets you get quote from nearby companies. Prices varied from $8 to $70, for the same piece and material! I gave the $8 one a try, because why not. It was quick to find a supplier, and awesome to be able to enter no payment details, with Stripe Link already present at checkout. Now all I had to do is wait for my order to get shipped! :)

Within a week or two, the company I picked via the Treastock marketplace gave me a choice between various colors, then shipped the piece to me in record time. The whole thing cost me under $15 and taught me how to do a quick 3D project from start to finish — worth it.