Mixing Cup Holder

Many hobbyists making and painting models and miniatures use containers for mixing and thinning paint, either for hand brushing or for airbrushing. One of the containers used for this is a 30ml plastic cup, widely used in the medical community for giving pills or liquids to patients; it is a convenient size, cheap, and disposable. However, because it widens noticeably from base to rim, if you use a mixing stick and leave it in the cup, it becomes liable to tipping over, spilling paint across your work surface.

In a recent YouTube video, I watched the presenter showing the use of a PVC pipe end cap to hold one of these cups, and I remembered a set of stabilizing bases for Tamiya Thin Cement and panel lining inks that I had 3D printed, thinking that I could do the same thing for these cups. The shape of this holder would be the frustum of a cone, with a similar conical cutout to hold the plastic cup. A bit of work in OpenSCAD, and I had a design that held a 30ml cup securely and had a base wide enough to make it unlikely to tip over.

The holder is a very simple shape, and is sufficiently sturdy with no infill for normal use, although if you want more weight in the holder, you can add infill.