Hard Drive Platter coaster

youmagine

I had a collection of hard drive platters piling up. Who doesn't? Each one is a highly polished aluminum mirror. I thought that there must be a 3D printed use for them, so I fired up 123D Design and made 2 different drink coaster/display bases. One was based on a cylinder with straight walls, while the other was based on a torus with curved walls. I liberated a few hard drive platters from some obsolete or defective 3.5 inch hard drives. You'll need some very small Torx bits to do this; look under the labels for hidden screws. The platters all seem to be the same 95mm in diameter, although some are slightly thicker than others - but that doesn't matter here. The two designs should allow the platter to snap into place with a small bit of room for printer variations. If you find them too tight or loose, play with the X and Y dimensions in your slicer a bit. Multiply by 1.005 and see where that takes it - just be sure to multiply both X and Y by the same amount, or you'll end up with an oval that won't fit anything. If using for a drink coaster, I'd recommend spreading a small layer of silicone around the edges of the interior before putting the platter in place. Leave the center of the base clear of silicone so it doesn't show - this should keep liquid from migrating under the platter. I started out printing them all black, then experimented with changing the filament color about halfway through the print. At .3mm layer height, there were 22 layers, so I changed at layer 11 or 12. I printed them with .3mm layer height in PLA at 50mm speed with 15% infill.