Catan Card Trays With Magnetic Docking

thingiverse

If you're like me, you hate when the cards get all messy when playing Settlers of Catan. So I modelled and printed a simple solution. These card trays are each deep enough to hold a full pile of any type of Catan card. They have a rounded internal edge and a slot wide enough for a thumb so if you're getting to the bottom of a pile you won't have trouble fishing the last card out (scientifically calibrated to my thumb, results may vary). They have through holes sized for 3mm magnetic balls to be added to the final product so you can magnetically dock the trays to each other if desired. Doing so is completely optional, but I thought it would help reduce the mess plus I thought it was a neat idea. Print in whatever material you're comfortable with, at whatever temperature your material requires. Test cubes are your friend, it's better to find out that your settings are producing brittle results after a 30 minute cube than it is to find this out after a 5 hour print. For me, I used various colors of PLA, and one of PETG. Some of my PLA wants to be printed at 200, some at 230. All of it wants a bed temp of 60. My PETG wouldn't hold together unless it was precisely 245 with a bed temp of 85. All my prints were at 60mm/s. If you want to install magnetic balls to lock the trays into a neatly organized bank, you'll need some kind of hammer or hammer-like thingy, a pin punch, and 3mm magnetic balls. The trick to the magnetic balls is that you'll need to orient them all the exact same, otherwise the magnetic polarity will fight itself and the trays will repel each other. In the pictures, you can see a string of magnetic balls, all lined up with the same polarity, stuck to the end of my punch. Gently pinch off the string except for one ball and tap this into a through hole in one of the trays. After I have one ball in place, I then take a string of them and attach to the one that is in place. You can then put punch on the opposite end of the string, then pinch off one more ball to tap into the next through hole. Wash/rinse/repeat until you've got a whole side complete. The next tray over must have the magnetic balls oriented the exact same way! The easiest way I found to do this for the first tray was to get the polarity by sticking a string of balls to one of the installed ones, then removing it, and then putting the end that was in contact with the installed ball onto the punch. Pinch off one ball and start on the other side. Once you have 1 full tray done, just put the next beside it and make sure that balls installed in the next have the same polarity. Needed: 3D printer. Whatever print media you desire in whatever colors. (optional) 3mm magnetic balls (optional) pin punch for magnetic ball insertion (optional) hammer or other heavy-ish blunt object for magnetic ball insertion