Parametric Glass Plate Stand (FreeCAD)

I recently had an idea when I wanted to tidy up a corner of my kitchen and make better use of the already limited space. It was fortunate that I had a few glass plates left over for the kitchen that I no longer needed. With the help of a suitable stand, they would provide additional storage space.

Of course, it had to look acceptable and be just the right height – so it was the perfect project for the 3D printer. And, of course, it was yet another challenge for the budding FreeCAD apprentice…

The result was the largest project I have ever implemented with FreeCAD. A project that, due to its size, had to be broken down into several parts that had to be glued together.

In order to adapt the glass plate stand, the following variables have to be set:

• plate_length : The length of the glass plate (mine was 520 mm)
• plate_width: The width of the glass plate (mine was 300 mm)
• plate_thickness: The thickness of the glass plate (mine was 4,2 mm)
• plate_corner_radius: The corner radius of the plate (min was 30 mm)
• total_height: The height of the stand (mine was 220 mm)

After carefully measuring your glass plate, I would highly recommend to export and print the test sample in order to check the accuracy of the plate thickness and corner radius measurements.

There are a few things to consider:

• plate_length must be greater or equal to plate_width
• The build volume of your printer must be able to print (plate_width / 2)
• In order to print the front and rear connectors, your printer must be able to print long narrow objects with a length of (plate_length - plate_width)

There are other variables that allow to customise several other parameters of the stand - I'm sure that you will discover their function…

After printing the parts, they must be glued together with a strong rapid glue. See the included images for information about to assemble the stand.

Have fun and enjoy your glass plate stand, or at least use it to learn something useful about FreeCAD.