Parametric Coin Patternweight

Do you have a bunch of change that the coin machine at the bank doesn't accept? No? Well, I do and I thought “why not put that change to good use and make patternweights!”.

This model is fully parametric, meaning in the Customizer you can:

• change the outer shape between circle, square and hexagon
• choose between large and mini size
• select from Euro 1cent, 2cent and 5cent coin sizes (modify the scad directly for different currencies)
• change height, floor&wall thickness, lid size
• change outer fillet for square and hex sizes (or disable fillet)

Print, fill with how many coins you need to get a good weight, stuff the remaining space with some fabric or yarn scraps (I know you have those) and fix the lid on with a dab of glue. Done! You could even decorate the outside with more fabric scraps, or yarn, or washi tape!

Some Design Notes

I prefer the square and hexagon sizes, because I can set them on their side without them rolling away. Added the circle shape because some might prefer that shape.

The default height of 20mm was an educated guess. You could go lower, but I like that this makes the patternweights very easily grabable. Grabbable. How many b's?

I didn't want or need stackable patternweights, but I wanted them to look nice enought to pass for random decoration objects when laying around my apartment. That's where the fillet came from.

I designed the large size first and then realized how big they actually turned out to be. I guess the mini is now the regular size, but I left the large as an option.

The lid is designed to be glued on. I don't expect to want to open these up once I have filled them with an appropriate amount of weight. The columns on the lid are just for positioning.

You can obviously also just fill these with sand or gravel or washers or whatever instead of coins.

Printing Notes

Use whatever filament (besides TPU I guess), this doesn't need any special strength. Go colorful or glittery or silky!

I printed mine in PLA at 0.2 layer height with a 0.4 nozzle (and some extrusion problems I haven't dialed in yet, so please ignore the bad print quality in the photos). Higher layers and larger nozzles shouldn't be a problem, this doesn't need super tight tolerances. Thinner layers and smaller nozzles would be a waste of printing time on this.