3D printing goes hand in hand with hiking. The desire to create projects at home is a satisfying hobby and many hikers have DIY hobbies such as 3D printing. Kirk enjoys printing items for us to use in his spare time.
This 3D-printed fuel canister stand was a project I liked the results of.
Fuel canister stands are also known as fuel can stabilizers or universal canister stands, and are designed for placing your canister of fuel onto it, to help give a wider, and more stable, footprint. This then leads to your cooking pot sitting more evenly, and potentially safer, on top of the can of fuel, on uneven surfaces.
Not everyone has even seen a canister stand in use. I didn’t pick one up until about 13 or 14 years ago when I received one as part of a box of gear to review for Backpacker Magazine article, from Jet Boil. I finally started using one (and MSR model) in the past decade. I primarily use one when I have a tall fuel canister (the big size) or I am using a 2 Liter size cooking pot. It’s not so much of an issue when you are using the small fuel canister and a small pot, such as a 1.3 Liter and smaller.
Tall canisters are helpful, but not necessarily safe in all uses (the pot is top-heavy if large).
Let’s look at the canister stands I have and the one we printed:
MSR Universal Canister Stand weighs in at 34 grams and retails for $24.99. While it has worked well over the years, I find it can be awkward to put a fuel canister into it and can be a bit loose on some canisters.
The Jet Boil fuel can stabilizer weighs in at 27 grams and retails for $6.99.
For the 3D-printed one, the weight is 23 grams. The cost for filament was 29 cents worth of PLA filament. It folds up nicely, into a compact package.
I tried it out on a Snowpwak Giga canister, small size. It snaps in perfectly on the 3rd leg and is a perfect fit. No looseness or wiggling is present.
Once on the canister of fuel, the legs become rigid and do not move at all.
Holding an MSR titanium pot, boiling water.
I felt this 3-D item came through with flying colors and performed perfectly. If anything, it worked better than the commercially made MSR one and was smaller when packed. It is now in my kitchen gear bag.
To Make The Fuel Canister Stand:
Find the pattern at Thingiverse first. (There are so many patterns you can download for free there.)
Kirk printed it on a Prusa Mk4, with 0.15 structural print settings in Prusa Slicer. He used 80% infill for the rigidity and because it has to hold some weight. He used 80% because the time to do that infill level was about the same time and filament as doing it at 50%.
To print it with those settings, it would take 1h 32m or 2h 21m with the “ironing” setting enabled so things looked nicer. Kirk chose the latter, for a more finished look.
He used what was on his machine, the PLA filament in the link above. If you want something heavier-duty, step up to something like ABS/ABA filament.
~Sarah