Playing cards holder

Below you'll find a guide to quick and easy removal of supports and a full guide how to use parametric Fusion 360 to create a personalized version and a small guide on how to calculate the length of the spring.

As already told on these pages, my wife suffers from a neurological progressive disorder that gives her limitations on things like having a strong grasp on objects. Also my mother suffers from rheumatoid arthritis which causes her pain to the joints of the hands.

We still like to enjoy our evenings while playing card games, so I noticed how tired my wife was after some long sessions, I decided to help them out by downloading a holder for playing cards, but the available ones are basically two disks joint together.

So after a lot of trials and error I finished up with this design which requires a compression spring of 25mm or 30mm of length and gives a good fell at keeping, removing or adding cards to it.

It can also be left on the table without handling it and if you want to hide your cards, you can also have it lying down on the table with faces to the bottom.

Usage policy

If you print this for someone, please DON'T DO IT FOR MONEY. It's unethical. A single holder uses in total less that 20 grams of PLA and takes very less than one hour print time, you can get the springs for 0,20€ or reuse those in old pens, so the cost is ridiculous.

Assembly guide

You will need a 25mm or 30mm spring to keep the two parts together.

To be able to create a holder you will need to:

• print the two parts;
• remove brim;
• remove supports;
• merge the two parts by passing one pin in the hole of the other piece;
• insert the spring in between as shown in this section view.

Guide to quick and easy removal of supports

After printing the model a single tree support will be present and attached to what seems to be a delicate part of the design, follow these instructions to easily remove it.

For better results, use some sandpaper to remove excesses from the bottom corners of the holder.

After doing this for both parts, merge them by passing one pin in the hole of the other piece and then put in place the compression spring.

Personalizing in Fusion 360

I'm providing the source Fusion 360 file that I've created the most parametric I could, so anyone can personalize this design for best fitting their necessity. Once imported in Fusion 360, go into the SOLID toolbar, under MODIFY menu select “Change Parameters” you can change all parameters from this window.

Simple visual explanation of parameters

Calculating the length of required spring

The minimum length of the spring can be calculated as:

(triangle_thickness + triangle_border_depth + pin_height + pin_cap_height_1 + pin_cap_height_2 - pin_cap_thickness) x 2

which with current project values is:

(1mm + 1mm + 10mm + 0.5mm + 1mm - 0.5mm) x 2

which is 26mm, hence using a 30mm spring will ensure the minimum necessary force.