3D Printing Easter Eggs

Holidays are a great opportunity for makers to challenge themselves to create new designs and try new techniques and then share them with the world. Every holiday is an evergreen design challenge that works at home or in the classroom. Design, Make, Share is the core concept guiding this blog.

The first thing I do when considering a holiday themed project is to research what models or designs are already available. In some cases, the search turns up empty such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day or National Hispanic Heritage Month. Fortunately, a search for Easter related designs brings up a host of models. There are several featured collections on 3D design repository Thingiverse that feature bunnies and eggs. Rather than designing a model from scratch, I collected a handful of interesting models.

I brought the models into my slicing software Cura to take a look and found some of the models as scaled would take too long to print.  I ended up printing two designs and then modifying my slicer settings for one of the designs to create a lattice work version of the model.

easter egg by Jooxoe3i – http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:743276 Print in place foldable design.

Modified version of (Easter) Egg by MarcoAlici – http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:290925 Original design is a simple egg. By turning off perimeters in the slicer, I created a model that is solely composed of infill creating a latticework design.

The next step was to use a new post-processing technique I am working on which involves inking 3D prints.

These Easter egg models were a great opportunity to experiment with 3D printing and post-processing techniques.

Please share your holidays design and digital fabrication experiments in the comments or via Twitter @DesignMakeTeach.