3D Printed Adapter for PVC Pipe K-Cup Dispenser

Like many people, I require coffee in the morning to help me begin to human correctly. Also like many other people my household has a Keurig.

This is mostly great, I no longer have to try to remember how to grind coffee and not spill the grounds everywhere. However... Now I have to keep track of dozens of Kcup pods. No easy task at pre-dawn hours.

Get a K cup holder you say? I don't want to give up counter space. And I haven't found one I really like. And the cubby hole the coffee maker is in doesn't allow the use of a drawer under the Keurig. I know, picky picky right?

The solution?

3D printed K cup PVC pipe adapter!

My wife and I have been using this for about a year now and it's awesome. It's sized to fit exactly to the compartment and holds about a weeks worth of coffee. The instructable's plastics contest turned out to be the perfect excuse to share it with all of you!

Whoa, wait a minute there. What were you doing when you found out K cups fit into PVC pipe?! Um... story for another time? Or... ask my wife?

Wait. No. Don't ask her... Lets just say I was drinking coffee while helping a friend with a different project and realized K cups and medium size potatoes are roughly the same diameter...

If like this product, but don't want to build your own, you can find it on my website here: 3D Printed K Cup Adapter

Step 1: Tools and Materials

OK, moving on. So what do we need make one of these things?

A length of 2" Schedule 40 PVC Pipe.
Saw to cut the PVC.

A standard wood handsaw will work fine.

3D printed base and pipe support (See next step for the files).
Hot glue or super glue.
Hook tape strips (Optional).

A note on the PVC pipe:

Stick with 2 inch schedule 40 or 2 inch furniture grade PVC pipe. Schedule 80 pipe has a smaller ID and some K-Cups might not fit well. Also, 2 inch PVC pipe is pretty common. The length of pipe used in this project was salvaged from the leftovers of a different project. So, raid the garage and maybe you won't need to buy a new stick of PVC pipe.

Amazon affiliate links for the parts:

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Step 2: Digital Caffeine

To make the 3D printed part of this PVC pipe to K-Cup adapter I grabbed a cup of coffee, my digital calipers, fired up Fusion 360 and set to work. After taking some measurements of the Kcup pod and the PVC pipe I translated that into a CAD model. After a couple test prints and minor tweaking, I present V4.0 here for your consumption!

Attached to this step are the STL files for 3D printing and the Fusion 360 model files.

I've printed these models successfully in PLA and ABS. The black parts shown in some of the pictures are ABS, the yellow parts are PLA. We know ABS shrinks more than PLA when it cools off, so ABS parts may fit a little tight onto the PVC pipe depending on your printer settings and tolerances of PVC pipe.

Starting settings for PLA were: 205*C extruder temp, 45*C bed temp, .2mm layer height, 30% infill
Starting settings for ABS were: 230*C extruder temp, 110*C bed temp, .2mm layer height, 30% infill

If you don't have a 3D printer and you're interested in getting a set of these you can purchase them here: www.makerneer.com

Step 3: Lets Brew

Assembly is straightforward:

Cut the PVC pipe to the length you want.
- Acetone will take the bar code and other markings off the pipe.
- I suggest cleaning the PVC pipe with soap and water after cutting it.
Place the PVC pipe end into the 3D printed K-Cup adapter base.
A couple drops of hot glue or super glue to hold the base securely onto the pipe is a good idea.
- I used super glue, doing it again I'd use hot glue so it was easier to remove if needed.
Place the pipe support onto the top of the pipe. If you're making a really long one you can add more supports. I chose not to glue the support to the pipe and it's worked fine so far.
Mount to where you're going to use it. I used hook tape to mount it to the backside of the cabinet door.

That's it, time to load it with your favorite K-Cup pods and brew some coffee!

Step 4: Gif a Man a Cup of Coffee?!

Sorry, couldn't help my self...

Bad puns aside, this was a fun and useful project. Can't say they all turn out useful.

I'm sure by now you're wondering how many k-cups we can actually fit in one of these PVC dispensers. The longest continuous stick of PVC I found was 10 feet long. So, by my math we should be able to fit about 67 k-cups into a 10 foot stick of PVC pipe. Not too bad, that's at least a month worth of coffee without a reload!

Worth noting - Occasional when loading an empty tube, a pod will end up a little cockeyed. A gentle nudge and you're back in business.

You're also probably wondering about the yellow part in the middle of the tube in some of the pictures. After an incident where I ended up with hot lemonade instead of coffee one morning I realized I should come up with something that shows what's loaded in the tube. Holiday season update - The display pod .stl file has been added!

I still believe that one of the best parts of Instructables is to learn new skills not just show off cool project, so I encourage you to checkout Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD software if you haven't already and make your own version of the display pod using the Fusion 360 files that are part of this Instructable in step 2.

If you read this far hopefully you enjoyed this Instructable and found it useful. If so, please consider voting for this Instructable in the plastics contest!

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If you'd like to see what I'm up to when I'm not Instructable-ing you can find me at these places:

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Note: This post contains affiliate links.