3D printed test tube holders

For my projects involving chemicals, I needed some test tubes and something to store them in.
I made 2 versions, 1 with plastic tubes that are actually plastic bottle prefabs(A plastic bottle before it is blown into the right shape). And 1 version with glass test tubes, the glass tubes were used to put the sugar beans in at my birth and so I find it quite fitting I now actually use them for science.

Glass tubes

The first step is to make a quick sketch with roughly the correct dimensions and shape
To make the legs fit nicely into the bottom and top parts the insertion on the legs is 0.5mm smaller than the holes it has to fit into. this makes it easy to assemble and with some glue, it won’t come apart easily.

Then extrude it and make it 3D

Then add some text, number the holes and fillet all the cornors and it alreadly looks quite good

Now in reality it took a bit of trial and error to design this since I only just started to use fusion 360 for 3D modeling.
After I created the model is was really easy to 3D print it with PLA plastic and some basic settings.

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The quality of the print could be better, especialy the top part with how much it warped but it looks good enough and does the job well. test tubes fit nicely and are easy to insert.

Plastic test tubes

This was my second attempt at designing my own test tube rack, this time made for using some bottle prefabs I had lying around that are perfect for sealable test tubes.

I started by creating a 3D model of the tube so I could work around that.

Then create Sketch with the right dimensions and rough shape.

Then after extruding it and filleting all the edges I had a nice looking 3D model to print.

And I find this test tube holder much better looking then the first try, quality was much better and easier to achieve, mostly because of the smaller footprint of the parts. I used transparent plastic with shows the infill and makes it look even better in my opinion.