3D Printed Print in Place Plate Holder

What did I do when I broke one of my wife's acrylic plate holders (it was old, and yellowed, and very brittle, really!)?

Well I could have attempted to find another, but oh no, I:

• Glued the broken plate holder fragments together as best as I could,
• Placed the glued fragments in a 2D scanner,
• Scanned the glued fragments to a JPEG on my Mac,
• Loaded the JPEG scan into Autodesk Fusion 360 via "Insert Attached Canvas",
• Scaled the canvas to the original plate holder size,
• Created a sketch outline of the canvas using the sketch spline, arc and line functions,
• Extruded the sketch,
• Added hinges,
• And finally 3D printed and replaced her old acrylic plate holder with "3D Printed 'Print In Place' Plate Holder".

Hmmm, so much for the easy way, I wonder if she'll notice...

Anyway, this model is a "print in place" design, and as such this plate holder is functional either with minor cleanup when using a brim for extra hold down force, or no cleanup whatsoever when not using a brim. In either case, no assembly is required.

I've included the file "Plate Holder, Print In Place.stl" which is the "print in place" file. However, if your slicer will not print this file, I've included the files "Left.stl" and "Right.stl" that can be used with your slicer to merge the model prior to printing. My final prints were at .15mm layer height, 20% infill, with no brim. However, as seen in the video, if your printer has difficulty with warping, then a brim may be used which will require additional cleanup prior to use.

For smaller diameter plates, a small dot of cyanoacrylate glue may be used to hold the hinge in position.

As usual, I probably forgot a file or two or who knows what else, so if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask as I do make plenty of mistakes.

Designed using Autodesk Fusion 360, sliced using Cura 4.1, and printed in PLA on both an Ultimaker 2+ Extended and an Ultimaker 3 Extended.