While making some paper holiday decorations with the wife yesterday, we cut out a holiday tree with a base [on Design Space, it's #M4DD1C48D]. The paper base was meant to be cut in three layers and glued together. The problem is that 0.5mm card stock stacked three times comes to a total thickness of ~1.5mm [accounting for expansion from glue saturation].

I watched her fiddle with this paper base until she got the tree fitted... and it didn't really fit! She had to glue it to yet another piece of card stock and glue the tree itself down. This didn't stabilize anything, and the tree still flopped about. So, I did what any engineer would do... by grabbing my calipers, some grid paper, and a pen, I measured the "base" and popped over into FreeCAD.

After about ten minutes of design [and 25 minutes of printing on my AnkerMake M5C] the little paper trees had a sturdy base!

The slots are 30.5x1x3mm [XYZ] and can support cardstock up to double the thickness of 100lb. The sharp corners were intentionally designed to improve bed adhesion [sometimes with glass, rounded edges tend to lift].

I'd love to see what remixes come out of this!