3D-Printed Diamine Inkvent Tree, Version 2.0
Quick update: My husband, Paul, has posted his files for printing the Inkvent stand yourself on Cults3D! He has set the price at $5, which I think is quite modest for all the work he did designing it. Have a look!
W00t, Inkvent time is almost here! For those who might not know, Diamine, a fountain pen ink manufacturer in the UK, creates an Advent calendar with 24 small ink bottles, and one 30 mL bottle for the 25th ink. Every day you can open a new ink, which is awesome for fountain pen enthusiasts!
Image from The Gentleman Stationer
Last year was my first year buying the Inkvent calendar, because I only started getting into fountain pens properly in August 2022. It was such a fun activity to do every day (although closer to Christmas I got sick, so it wasn’t so fun then 🤧).
I asked my husband to design me a tree-shaped stand for my inks so I would have a better way to store them, and the tree on the left below was what he designed last year. It was a pretty good tree, though because the design had a bunch of overhangs, the printer had a hard time rendering the design well. It printed up well enough to hold the inks, which is what mattered.
This year, I asked him to make me another one, and he spent a lot of time making a new design to address the shortcomings of version 1. Version 2 is the one on the right below!
There are a ton of improvements:
Each tier is a separate module that twists/snaps onto the tier below. This makes printing (and storage, if needed) easier, and if, for some reason you only want to bring out one tier of inks, you can separate it out.
It rotates! The base has a track for adding ball bearings, so now I can more easily access any ink.
It has numbers for each day of Advent, so now I know which ink is which when I’ve removed it from the tree, not that this was a deal breaker before, but it’s a nice detail.
You can’t see them, but there are some softer 3D-printed feet at the bottom to prevent the base from scratching whatever surface it’s sitting on.
Inkvent tree version 1.0 on the left, 2.0 on the right
Another picture of the trees with a few inks from last year placed in version 2.0 as a demo. No spoilers from this year’s Inkvent!
Here’s a short video showing how the stand rotates on its ball bearings.
My husband is working on putting the STL files online so that if you want to print your own, you can. It’ll come with versions with and without the ball bearing track. I encouraged him to set a fair price for the files because he worked really hard on the design and should be rewarded for his work. We’re not really set up to print these out and ship them to people in a timely manner, so getting the files and printing yourself will be the best option for now. Maybe in the future we’ll set up a service where you can buy printed items like this from us. I have been thinking about other 3D-printed fountain pen accessories that I want, that may become future products, who knows?
I’m so excited to start swatching the Inkvent inks! I will definitely be posting them here on my blog daily, so keep that in mind if you want to check them out, or if you want to avoid spoilers. I’m not sure if I’ll have a set time that I post every day, as I usually do these ink swatches when I feel like it. 😀
