Tired of Loose Change in Your Pockets? 3D Print a Wallet-Sized Coin Holder!

After the holidays not many of us are running around with much loose change. As conscientious as we may try to be about unnecessary spending during this time, we are almost always bound to spend more than we planned. That’s just one of the less fortunate aspects of this time of year: bills. For those of us who are lucky enough to have some spare change right now, “Jackofalltrades” brings us an Instructable billed as a “Solution to Loose Change.” Apparently this 3D designer does not much care for having lots of coins sitting around in piles or jangling in his pockets, and he’s gone ahead and done something about this.

And what, you ask, is Jackofalltrade’s solution to this problem? He explains:

“When I first started having this problem I came up with the idea for a credit card-sized holder that would slip into my wallet and hold 100 cents in assorted coinage. I was only able to realize this concept recently when we bought a 3D printer, but I am very happy with the results.”

The design concept for this Coin Holder is pretty straightforward. It involves a credit card-sized flat plastic object that holds “100 cents of coinage.” The card is able to hold each coin snugly, while a small hole behind each coin makes them easy to pop out. He ended up with a card that is about three credit cards thick (2.4 mm thick), with a bottom support layer that is .6 mm thick. He used the following diameters for the rest of the coins: quarters are 24.6 mm; nickels are 21.7 mm; and dimes are 18.3 mm. I guess he went ahead and forgot about carrying those pesky pennies, which is very understandable!

Now, moving from the design concept to the 3D model (Step 2), Jackofalltrades explains that he decided his holder would carry three quarters, two dimes, and one nickel equally spaced out and not too close to the edges, for a total of $1.00 worth of change that can be easily carried in a wallet. Once that was decided, he went ahead and started 3D printing the card in PLA, taking 40 minutes and using 2.5 meters of filament. The only problem printing this model that Jackofalltrades reports is with the sizes of the coin holes. His solution to this was to make them slightly too small and then he used ” a small chisel to clean up and fine tune the fit.”

So it looks like Jackofalltrades’ design is solid enough to take care of any annoying loose change problems that may occur. He reports:

“This project is finished! I am very pleased with the results. The coins stay in the card even when turned upside-down and don’t jingle around at all when they’re in your pocket. And when you want them, you can pop them out easily with one hand. The card is about as thick as 3 credit-cards, but that being said it does not seem to take up a bunch of space in the wallet. In my opinion it is much more convenient, space-conservative, and easy-to-use than any other method of carrying change.”

It seems that 3D printing is in the position to solve many of life’s problems, big and small. If loose change is one of those problems for you, try this handy Coin Holder out. And if you need to carry more than $1.00 in change, why not print a couple more out that you can keep stocked just in case?  Discuss this design in the 3D Printed Coin Holder forum on 3DPB.com.