3D Printable Gaming Gadgets!
3D printers are amazing – I’ve had one for years and it’s helped me prototype and build the open source response time tool and the open source latency tool, I’ve designed and built a plumbing fitting to fix my washing machine sucking back dirty water, and I designed a tool to let me tighten my G933 racing wheel to my desk because the plastic knobs they’ve included are useless. This time though I thought I’d turn my eye to gaming gadgets – it turns out there are a load of cool and down right useful things you can print to make your gaming experience better. I’ve printed a few here, but mostly thanks to my Elegoo Mars having a fairly small print volume, I have even more suggestions you might fancy printing.
The first one is becoming less and less relevant over time, especially with the introduction of wireless gaming mice – but if you’re still rocking a wired gaming mouse, you might like a mouse bungee. The one I’ve printed is really cool – it screws into your desk, although some double sided tape would work about the same too. You lay the cable in one of the two slots, then screw the cap in on top. That’ll keep the cable steady and stop it from getting snagged down the back of your desk. This one is made by DasMia on Printables – and all of these will be linked in the description if you want to check them out! If this isn’t quite your style you can opt for a more conventional style – I found this one by AIS on Thingiverse. Sadly this won’t fit in the print volume of my Elegoo Mars, but it looks like it might even have compliance built in for a bit of spring to it.
If you’re all in on wireless peripherals, maybe a taste of flare on your keyboard is what you’re after. There are a myriad of Cherry MX style keycaps across the web you can print out. A resin printer is probably the best bet for this one as you get a wonderfully smooth finish straight out the printer. My choice of stylish cap is this Togepi by daphne on Thangs. It’s ridiculously cute, and with a careful paint job it you can make it look like the real thing! Of course there are plenty more, including this low poly Bulbasaur which sadly I don’t think it’s a watertight model meaning it won’t print without some modifications. If you just need some replacement caps and don’t care for shine-through, you can print yourself any style you fancy! I printed this standard Cherry MX cap, but there’s plenty of profiles available. And yes, they do fit straight on the switch!
The next one is for someone with a cleaner setup than I – this is a controller stand for, in this case, an Xbox style controller. Now there are actually a load of controller stands – some dual controller stands, some single like this one. I picked this Xbox branded one from Bamingo Design 3D on Thangs, but there are literally hundreds of different designs – some even smaller and compact, some even more specific to the controller type. There are loads to choose from and they seem to work really well.
If stands are of interest, you might be surprised to find there are a bunch of laptop stand designs too. Now I couldn’t fit these on my printer, but this hexagonal design by Mateo on Thangs looks amazing. It’s four pieces which clip together and hold apparently even hefty machines aloft. If you haven’t seen my video testing how much performance you can gain by using a laptop stand, definitely check that out in the cards above! Again there are plenty of designs if this one isn’t for you.
If you’d rather print a stand for your headphones, again there are endless options. None of these fit on my tiny printer – I really want a bigger resin printer – but this screw on one caught my eye from s.campeau on Thangs. You just clamp it to the edge of your desk and it has a nice curve to support your headphones nicely without causing excessive wear. There are plenty of styles including more like this rather nice wood one I have, but this compact side of the desk one looks great to me.
Something that might surprise you is that some more talented people than I have actually designed full blown mouse shells – some replicas of existing products like this MX Vertical, and some are custom like this Revan one which uses the guts of a Glorious Model O wireless, but ends up being a 55g mouse. This is frankly amazing – being able to replace, customise and upgrade something as crucial as your mouse shell is really really cool.
The last one is one that would actually work for pretty much anyone. It’s a little more involved than just downloading a file and slicing it for your printer, but it’s a really cool thing to have around. It’d also work better with a two colour FDM printer, but since I have a resin printer I’ve done it a little differently. I’ve also had to shrink it a little to fit on my printer – but in short this is a WiFi QR code coaster. If you have print one of these out you have a physical object you can show to guests to let them connect, and it serves double duty as a functional item too. Now because I’ve only got black resin here I sprayed some white paint down into the valleys to give it enough contrast to work, and it does work. Of course this isn’t my WiFi network, but let me show you how you make this. First you’ll need to generate a WiFi QR code – I’ll link the site I used in the description for you. Download the image as an SVG, then open up your CAD software of choice. I use Fusion360 which is, at least at the time of filming, still free for personal use. Import the SVG, then comes the tedious bit which is selecting all the “white” space, including some annoying to find ones. It doesn’t take all that long really, I recreated it for this recording and it took around two minutes. I checked it still scanned with the ones I’d selected just to make sure, then extruded 5mm up. I added a 5mm wide offset border and extruded that 10mm, then added another sketch on the bottom and extruded that 5mm. I also added some filleted corners to make it look nice. And that’s it, send it to your printer and get it made!
That’s all the stuff I found, but if you’ve designed, printed or just outright found something cool please do share it in the comments down below! I’d also love to hear what you think about the different options – even if you don’t have a 3D printer, what would you want to print first?
Links to the files & projects:
https://www.printables.com/model/483161
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5367859
https://thangs.com/designer/models/3d-model/198796?part=ab9a8399-ebe6-42f6-be4a-1faf4290c71f
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5651454
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:281103
https://thangs.com/designer/s.campeau/3d-model/Headset%20desk-side%20hanger-723939
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3993263
https://www.printables.com/model/7670
https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/#wifi
