Bicycle Themed Photo/Business Card Stand

This easily customisable bike themed picture stand is a perfect project for bicycle enthusiasts that are looking for a way to display some of their favourite photos from cycling adventures! It also can be a great themed gift for your bike obsessed friends! By scaling the model to suit your needs, you can also use it as an attention grabbing business card holder for your bike related business. This Instructable will show the basic process of making the stand including some simple customisation, such as an engraved name on the front

Tools/supplies

- Any 3D modelling software (free options such as TinkerCad are a great place to start for beginners)

- 3D slicer software (many free options available)

- 3D printer (Can order project if you don’t own one yourself)

- 3D printer filament (Basic PLA is recommended as it’s a decorative item, but other materials such as ABS will work as well)

- Photo/Image of bicycle

A great part of this project is the fact the bike can be modelled from any variety of bike you can think of (or get a picture of). This way you can give a fitting gift for your mountain biking and road cycling friends alike. Once you’ve found/taken a fitting picture for the back stand, import it into your modelling software of choice. Now, using the basic line and curve tools, trace a simplistic outline of the bike. Keep in mind that this will be 3D printed and some intricacies of the bikes design won’t be able to be cleanly reproduced, therefore you should focus on the main features and making them clear. Once you have a closed sketch you can extrude/pad the sketch into an 3D object.

Here is an example of a road bike (note the simple level of detail):

The next step is to add a base. To do this, you can create another sketch from the back side of the bike you have created and start with a basic rectangle shape. This will mean you can extrude/pad the sketch forward through the bike and out the front to make sure the back of the model remains flush for printing. Make sure the sketch intersects with the bike outline already created to create one larger body.

Now, the base will need a slot for a photograph or business card to sit in. This can be added by creating a sketch on one side of the base of a rectangle. This sketch can the once again be extruded as a cut/pocket to create a slot in the top of the base. The base can then be refined by using fillets on the top edges on the front of the base. And that’s it! You should have a model ready for printing! The thickness and depth of this cut-out is up to you, but remember that you will likely need support structure to hold up the front if it's large. With a shallow cut-out there will only be a slight overhang meaning you could get away with no supports if your printing settings are right.

A final personal touch that you can add for yourself, or to personalise it as a gift, is to imprint a name into the front of the base. This can be done using the text tool in your 3D modelling software on the front of the base and then using a cut/pocket tool to leave a named imprinted. A similar process can be used to include your own name and/or the date on the bottom as a reminder if you end up making one of these as a gift.

Now you've completed your 3D model it is time to prepare it for printing! This is easiest by exporting your final design as a .stl file and opening this file with your slicer software. Once in the slicer you can arrange the model to print on its back side, slice it and save the gcode file. And that's it, this file is now ready to be run on the printer, Enjoy!