I like small wallets. I also like them to hold plenty of cards, with at least 3 of them easily accessible. For this, the only available choices usually involves elastic bands that stretches with time and gets stuck in the pocket edge. I therefore decided to design and 3D print my own wallet, using a flexible TPE filament.

My first design had a classic bi-fold setup, with a separate bill compartment, 6 card slots but no space for coins. This worked surprisingly well, and I used this for a couple of months. Though being smaller than my previous, store-bought wallet, I wanted to go even smaller. I realized just how seldom I actually use cash, as there is hardly a store in Sweden that doesn’t accept cards. So I decided to skip the bill compartment and make a wallet with the smallest possible footprint I could, still being able to hold all the cards that I use on a regular basis. The result was a wallet with a size less that 97x57x12mm – about 75% of a deck of cards.

It has 4 easy accessible slots for the most common cards, and a recessed middle slot for folded emergency cash and up to 3 other cards – altogether more than the bigger wallet, not counting the bill compartment.

This is now my default wallet, and I use it daily in my front jeans pocket. After more than 2 months of use, there are so far no visible marks of wear or signs of deterioration. The fit for the cards are near perfect, and I never have to worry about dropping the cards – I can shake it upside-down without the cards moving, but can easily take out the cards when I want to.

This is free

If you want to download and 3D print your own wallet, I’ve made both the larger and smaller the models freely available at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1363650