Compact Mechanical Wallet
Product Design & Rapid Prototyping
Overview
A compact, mechanical wallet designed and 3D printed from scratch — built around a few specific goals: hold cards and cash securely, mount an AirTag so it's never truly lost, and feel satisfying to actually use every day.
Design Goals
The wallet combines four mechanisms into one small footprint: an AirTag mounting slot, a money clip, a cascading card mechanism that fans the cards out for easy access, and a snap-lock closure that keeps everything secure in a pocket.
Iteration & Prototyping
Getting the mechanisms to actually work together took several rounds of prototyping. Each iteration was printed, tested by hand, and refined — dialing in tolerances on the snap-lock and the card mechanism so cards would fan out smoothly without feeling loose or getting stuck.
Fabrication & Assembly
Every part was FDM 3D printed and assembled by hand. A lot of the final refinement came down to part tolerances — small adjustments to clearances made the difference between mechanisms that jammed and ones that snapped together cleanly.
Result
The final wallet holds cards and cash securely, keeps an AirTag onboard for tracking, and the snap-lock and card mechanism both operate smoothly after refinement. A solid example of taking a product from a rough concept through iterative testing to a finished, functional object.