Cup and Saucer Display Stand

Owners of fancy antique tea-cups often buy little display stands similar to this for silly prices, like $10-20.  Sounds like a job for 3D printing?  Rather than re-create one of the commercial ones, I designed my own configuration from scratch. You can print a couple of them for less than the price of a cup of tea.

I refined my initial design a couple of times and ended up with something nicely stable and functional. It prints without supports, for a nice finish

With  15 to 20% infill, it comes out nice and light (20g or less), and yet is stable enough that even with a bump or two it seems to hold the fragile items alright. I haven't translated this into an earthquake rating - but I'm guessing you're okay up to about a Richter M5.6 at least.

Excuse the marginal grey-PLA print among the example photos - had some filament feed problems so it was a bit stringy. :( My prints with translucent PLA material are my favourites - semi-clear to pick up the colour of its surroundings so it's almost invisible.

In testing, I see that different saucers will sit at different angles. With a bit of a camber to the rear support face, this design appears to accommodate all I've tested quite well. I'm sure there's probably a 19th century Lithuanian saucer or a Nigerian chalice plate that will be terribly incompatible though, so no promises that it'll work for everyone.

Use at your own risk - I'm not responsible for Grandma's priceless tea set if you try this and break anything. :)

Notes:

Prints well with medium/low resolution and 20% infill or so. Just clean up the edge chamfers with a bit of sandpaper or scrape with a knife and you're all set.

Even with a coarse resolution, it works pretty good.

Design Date:  Mar 2017

Category: Organization