Practical 3D Printing - Takeaway cup handle

Practical 3D Printing - Takeaway cup handle

Short backstory: I'm partial to a large cup of takeaway hot chocolate, but not to the heat of the cup, those cardboard sleeves, if even available, are not a lot of help either. After some searching I did eventually find a thermos-style mug that is actually watertight, which does keep the drink hot, and not spill, unlike most such things. I can even usually get the cafe to create me a tea in the mug directly.

Lifeventure Mega Trek Mug

This of course only works if I remember to pack it. I also prefer not to put hot chocolate in on top of the tea dregs so.. I went looking for 3d-printable handles. There are a couple of designs for these on Thingiverse but most seem to require that the handle remain in one piece once made and assembled, making them awkward to carry about:

8oz Cup Holder - shallow base - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:598042

For my attempt I designed the handle and the cup-holding rings separately. To get a shape similar to a normal mug handle I stretched a circle into an ellipse, and had some fun with OpenSCAD's rotate_extrude which makes fun shapes. I made it do this:

Handle from rotated ellipse

To hold the cup itself, which is helpfully cone shaped, I created a couple of tapered rings using the actual cup shape as a guide. After this I then came up with a way to join the two, temporarily, using a slot on the side of the rings, and a vertical piece on the handle.

Handle and Ring with clips

The finished article

Now all I need to do is add some rings that fit smaller mugs, and keep it in my backpack.

Anybody want one? £5.50!