Designed for the SelfCAD Design Challenge, this compact glue bottle holder can help immensely when using tacky glue for model making or other arts & crafts projects! 

One of my biggest frustrations with model making when I was in architecture school was having to constantly keep shaking and squeezing the bottle of tacky glue just to get a tiny dab of glue to come out without it being clogged.

Think of this 3D print as a solution in a similar way to how ketchup manufacturers redesigned their bottles to have the lid on the bottom instead of the top.

With this model your glue will stay towards the opening and already be pointed down to improve efficiency while working on your next model making project.

Just place a piece of cardboard or scrap piece of paper below to catch the glue as it may drip down.

I created the model in SelfCAD by drawing a profile and then using the revolve command 360 degrees with 200 segments to create the rounded shape. I wanted the profile to be able to hold various sizes of glue bottles so that's why there is the rounded area towards the top and I had to measure out the depth of the glue bottle to make sure there was enough clearance and weight distributed when the glue bottle was placed on top and wouldn't be too top heavy.

It was super easy to create the form using the revolve tool in SelfCAD and I thought I could dress the model up a bit with some cut-outs. I then created the perforations by drawing a cube then stretched the cube into long diagonal shapes that would be used to create the cut-outs in the model. These diagonal pieces are shown in the last image with the colors yellow, green, & pink.

I had actually run into a slight problem where my browser for SelfCAD had kept crashing when I tried to boolean difference the diagonals to be subtracted from the profile of the glue bottle holder, so at that point I had exported all of the components together and subtracted the cut-outs using Rhino. Maybe there was just a glitch in my program that SelfCAD may still be working on and my file was getting pretty heavy at that point too, perhaps too many cut-outs which may have been causing the crashes. One great thing about the SelfCAD program is that you actually can import and export which is super useful for switching between programs depending on what you feel most comfortable with. Regardless SelfCAD was super easy to pickup and learn the commands and I highly recommend using it for beginners or professionals!

Printed as shown in white ABS plastic with NO support material required!

I also did a little bit of a stress test on the model after it was printed to see if the glue bottle holder would hold up to pressure put down on it and I was pleasantly suprised to find how sturdy it was!

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