Design and 3D Print a Custom ASA Cup Holder Adapter for Your Car

After months of relentless winter, Syracuse, NY is finally enjoying warm summer weather. Whether you’re embarking on a long road trip or heading to a seasonal destination, the drive ahead offers ample time to enhance your vehicle’s interior. 3D printing allows you to tailor your car’s ergonomics, ensuring maximum comfort and convenience on the road.

Consumer‑grade 3D printers typically print in PLA—a corn‑derived polymer that, while affordable, offers limited heat tolerance and degrades under prolonged UV exposure. In a hot car interior, PLA can warp, and items left in sunlight may fade, rendering it unsuitable for automotive applications.

Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate (ASA) is a robust alternative to ABS, delivering superior heat resistance and UV stability. ASA withstands the high temperatures of a sun‑heated vehicle cabin and resists photodegradation, making it ideal for exterior and automotive parts.

I always keep a 1‑liter water bottle on hand, but its dimensions exceed the stock cup holders in my vehicle. Using SolidWorks and the F370 printer available in our workshop, I designed a custom ASA adapter that securely holds the bottle during travel.

Prior to modeling, I measured the cup holder’s inner diameter and depth by tracing the curved profile onto a sheet of paper placed at the vehicle’s center console.

Using a flatbed scanner, I captured a scale drawing of the cup holder and opened it in Inkscape, an open‑source vector editor. After tracing the profile with a green path over the blue scan lines, I exported the vector as a DXF file for import into SolidWorks.

In SolidWorks, I imported the DXF via File → Open, which launched the DXF wizard. Using a combination of Extrude, Loft, and Split Body operations, I sculpted the adapter geometry, ready for manufacturing.

After a five‑hour print run on the F370, the ASA adapter was finished and immediately tested inside the vehicle.

The finished product!

Tags: 3D Printing