The Challenge
The RHYTHM FUN M4138J treadmill ships with a plate accessory for holding a tablet on the console. With a TV already in the room, that tablet plate was never going to get used, but it sat in a perfectly good mounting slot that could be doing something useful. What the treadmill did not come with was a cup holder, and nothing off the shelf fits its specific console mount. The mount is proprietary to this machine, so the only way to reuse that slot was to make a part that matches it exactly.
What We Did
Rather than measure the mount by eye, we 3D scanned the original tablet plate accessory. That scan captured the exact geometry of how the factory part locks into the treadmill, and it became the reference the new part was built around in FreeCAD. Designing off the real mounting interface is what let the cup holder slide into the same slot as cleanly as the part it replaces, with no drilling and no changes to the treadmill.
From there it became an original design rather than a copy. The holder has a recessed well sized to hold a mug or jar securely while walking, and a cutout in the rim so a handled mug seats fully with its handle passing through the side. It installs and removes the same way the tablet plate did, by sliding into the console slot.
Before committing to a print, the design was validated with a finite element (FEM) stress simulation in FreeCAD. With the mounting tabs held fixed and the weight of a full cup applied to the well, the simulation confirmed the plate and mount would carry the load without flexing or failing. That is the difference between a part that looks right and one that is known to hold up, and it is a standard step in how we approach any load-bearing design.
The Result
The finished piece turns an unused accessory port into a genuinely useful one. It holds a drink steady through a workout, clears a mug handle without fuss, and pops in and out whenever needed. A small part, but it is a tidy example of the full process on display: take an existing component, capture it accurately with a 3D scan, design something new that fits it perfectly, and confirm it under load before it is ever printed. That is the same workflow behind any replacement part or custom accessory we make for gear that was never meant to be modified.
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