kitchen sponge dish (vase mode)

I needed a way to hold my sponges that allows them to drain and dry easily (not stacked up on top of one another), so I designed this quick model. It holds a scrub daddy (I cannot recommend this enough), a regular sponge, and another item if you wish (I have another scrubby sponge, but I did not have a clean one for the photo… I'm sure you don't want to look at my gross dirty sponge).

I cannot stress this enough but… absolutely do not, under any circumstance, print this in brown. Sure, you think a dark wood filament would look classy, but trust me. Do not do it. Maybe use a marble PLA, that will look classy next to your sink.

Print settings

This model was designed to be printed in vase mode. In order to print correctly, you should use these settings:

• Spiral vase mode / Spiralize outer contour: turn this on, this is how the whole magic works
• Line Width: 0.8mm (this is important, and yes, you can do it with a 0.4mm nozzle)
• Layer Height: 0.3mm (not necessarily required)
• Bottom Thickness / Bottom Layers: 1.2mm (e.g. 4 layers at 0.3mm layer height) (this is important to get the best quality bottom with this model)
• Printing Temperature: +10 to +15 degrees hotter than your usual temperature (for example, I usually print PLA at 200, but print this model at 210)
• Flow: 110% (because why not)

Update: January 2023

I originally designed this dish for my specific needs, thinking “who would want to print this”. Well… it turns out it's a lot of you? And you have all been so nice and not telling me that the dividers are all wrong. But let's face it… they are.

I have now added a 3MF file that includes all dividers as separate parts. If you download that file, you can delete any of the separators that you don't want, resulting in a sponge dish that meets your own needs! 🎉

Remarks about the Soap Dishes contest

Here I go breaking all the rules again. But I don't really ever use bar soap, so I don't have a use for one. I do still have a use for home goods that are in the same spirit!

This technically can hold a bar of soap, but really, it's within the spirit of the contest. It is a useful household item, and surprisingly one that is rather difficult to find a really good implementation of to buy. Before this, we used to just put the sponges in a little dish, stacked on top of one another. I've seen folks use soap dishes, bowls, and all the like. And hey, this model still sits next to your sink and helps you get things clean!