3D Printed Easter Bookmarks

This coming Sunday, many will celebrate Easter - and it just wouldn't be fair to let them celebrate without an Easter-themed 3D Printed bookmark to spread the joy!

This whole trend started on Superbowl (tm) Sunday, then Valentine's Day, then We Hate Paper day (which is actually every day), and a bunch more.

Given that I've described so much about how I've created those projects in prior posts, I won't bore you with the details on this one. I'll just share the model (at the bottom of the post).

Imagine the looks on the kids faces, when they look in their easter baskets, and instead of delicious chocolate goodies, they find a pile of 3D Printed plastic bookmarks in the image of decorated Easter eggs! Oh Joy!

"Thanks mom and dad! Now seriously, where is the chocolate?"

The Model

You can find this model on Thingiverse - along with the many other bookmark designs I've created. Enjoy!

3D Printed 4-Leaf Clover Bookmark for St. Patricks day

After the Valentines Day Heart paperclip, the Football paperclip, the "We Hate Paper" paperclip and the Creeper Clip - I was sure the paperclip... errr... BOOKMARK phenomenon was over. But then. This.

So, first of all - they're not 3D Printed paperclips. They're 3D Printed bookmarks. 

That is so much less offensive, since everyone knows We Hate Paper. Second, Saint Patrick's Day had to be celebrated with something 3D Printed - so what better, easier way to do that than with a Bookmark? (you thought I was going to say paperclip)

Design Goals

Let's face it. I had one goal here. Simple, Fast and Cute. Oh - I mean I had 3 goals here.

Design Summary

Saint Patrick's Day has a few iconic symbols, but I think the 4-leaf clover is the only non-controversial one (I mean, I don't really even know what a Leprechaun is, and I refuse to drink green beer). So - starting with the Heart-shaped paperclip (Bookmark!), I simply transformed it using very similar dimensions.

Design Challenge

There was one very tricky part to this design. While each leaf of the clover leaf looks like a simple heart, it definitely has a distinct inward curve down the center of each leaf. It was quite hard to achieve that in a clover shape. When I used the basic heart from the Valentines Heart model, it just didn't look like a clover leaf. So I tried something else...

I basically took an elongated and flattened oval-shaped sphere (is there a name for an oval-shaped sphere?) and then cookie-cut a half heart shape out of it to make each half of each leaf of the clover. Then put those pairs together for each leaf. Then duplicated that to make four leaves. The stem was simply a curved spline extruded and rounded - and the outer clip part is a cylinder with the middle cut out.

The Model

You can get the Clover Bookmark here (don't you dare use it as a paperclip!)... and I strongly recommend printing a few hundred of these and giving them to your friends before they celebrate Saint Patrick's day!

If your friends don't like Bookmarks, you can always give them Free Donuts.

Creeper Paper Clips (3D Printed)

After my daughter decided that the Heart-Shaped paperclips were a great gift for her friends for Valentines day, she realized that maybe the boys in the class should have a non-heart option.

We 3D printed a few of the Superbowl football paperclips as an option, but then came up with another idea - Creeper Clips! These have the face of the popular Minecraft (tm) creature called the Creeper. It's a simple pixelated creepy face with a paperclip base.

Design Approach

There was one interesting thing about this model that's worth sharing (besides the paperclip part which I've already over-used). To get the multi-color pixelated look, I created different thickness areas on the face of the model.

original with tiny 2.5mm pixel size

To do this, I simply made 2.5mm by 2.5mm square tiles that were 0.4mm thick, and randomly (but evenly) pasted them on the base model in depths of one or two tiles. That resulted in a model which had 3 depths, each of which lets through a different amount of light and therefore gives the appearance of multiple shades of green - giving the Creeper quite an authentic look!

Adjusting the Model

Turns out the tiny 2.5mm blocks don't print that well at speed or when printing many copies at the same time. I adjusted by doubling the size of the "pixels" to 5mm squares, and got a much better result without sacrificing the look of the final print.

different height pixels colored for visibility

I also created a larger size by simply scaling up, which also increased the size of the original pixels to 3.25mm, which also worked pretty well.

The final adjustment was to give more space between the inner shape and the clip. I started with 1.5mm, which tended to crease or cut the paper that it was clipped onto - so I increased it to 2.6mm for a much better result.

The Model

Here is the Creeper Clip paperclip model. Print a few dozen to give away to your Minecraft fan friends!

For Valentines Day: 3D Printed Heart Paperclips

Why Paperclips?

I know - paperclips are not particularly romantic, or special, or even interesting - not even a little bit. In fact, some might say they foster the use of paper - which we would never want to do.

BUT - When shaped like hearts, paperclips become about 0.001% more interesting than when they are shaped like paperclips. And when you can say you made them yourself - on your 3D Printer - they become even more interesting (I'll say 1.7% more interesting).

More importantly - when one of these little, boring, uninteresting heart-shaped paperclips can be printed in 2 minutes on your 3D Printer - well - NOW I think think they just got 400% more interesting!

Anything that prints in 2 minutes on my 3D printer and has even the slightest utility, is a winner in my book.

I've written a few posts already on paperclips in a row (the Football for superbowl, the "We Hate Paper" clip) - so you can tell I'm a bit into this theme and I won't get into the details on this model. I'll just say, again, that these babies print FAST. I can print a dozen in under 25 minutes :)

I created these for my 9 yr old daughter to clip onto her Valentine Day cards that she gives to friends at school - so this model has been a winner all around.

There are just so many different designs you can create to appeal to the paper-lover in your life - get creative!

The Model

Here is the 3D Heart-Shaped Paperclip model so you can spend 2 minutes getting one for yourself.
I'm posting this model hopefully with enough time for you to get busy printing hundreds in time for Valentines Day.

"We Hate Paper" Paperclips are ironic

When I started designing simple, fast-printing 3D printed paper-clips, it was clear I was delving into an area I don't really support - that is, the over-use of printed paper in school. I'm not a fan of paper-based assignments in most cases - unless the paper adds to the learning objective somehow (like in art, origami, or...uh... confetti for parties ;).

I had an idea - what if I made a paper-clip which expressed my distaste for the over-use of paper? It would be fun, perhaps funny, and definitely ironic to have a paper-clip which expressed distaste for paper ;)

The "We Hate Paper" paper-clip is the result. It's possibly just a start for a whole line of "We Hate Paper" products.

I'm often looking for ways to use 3D Printing within an educational context - in school - as part of a learning objective - but I never expected that teaching "irony" would be one of the possibilities.

The Model

The "We Hate Paper" paper-clip model is posted and free on Pinshape so you can print it yourself.
If you're a teacher, print a whole load of these for your class to get a laugh from them or their parents. If you're a parent, print a bunch for your kids to clip to their paper homework to return a subtle message to the teacher ;)

Make a Football Paper Clip - Fast, useful 3D Printer Project

In honor of the Superbowl today, I wanted to design a really easy football-themed model which was both useful and super fast to print. Small, useful models which are fast to print are really great for school projects where many kids are often waiting for a single printer, and looking for results within on class period. This model achieves all that.

Design Goals

My main goal was to have a football theme. What better way to achieve than than by using a model of a Football! My second goal was to have the result be somewhat useful - not just a trinket.

You probably know I've done lots of trinkets, and both kids and adults really like those, but I am becoming partial designing and printing more useful things. Third - I wanted this to be a small model which could print fast and reliably.

Design Details

One of the things I dislike most about classrooms today is the continuous and heavy use of paper. There's just so much more that can go digital but hasn't yet - and paper often adds a burden in paces where it is unnecessary.

That said, I decided to design a paper clip - ah.. the irony.

I've noticed in previous flat-model printing I've done that the printed PLA in heights of 1-2mm is quite flexible. I figured I could create a paperclip-like structure quite easily on a flat surface, in practically any shape I wanted.

I tried a football shaped design. Here's the steps I used to create this:

1 - Sketched an oval with 6 points using the "Spline" tool in 123D Design - getting a Football shape pretty easily. It was about 30mm wide and 50mm long.

2 - Extruded the football to 1.4mm deep.

3 - Duplicated and reduced the size to about 75% the original.

4 - Shelled out the original to make it just an outline of about 3mm width.

5 - fit the smaller football inside the larger outlined football leaving approximately 1-2mm gap between the two (that's the space the paper will fit when it's a paper clip).

6 - create a connecting rectangle which is 3mm wide, long enough to bridge the gap between the objects and 1mm high. I place that at the tip of the football connecting the two parts.

7 - Use short rectangle pieces which are 1mm wide and 1mm tall - to create a "laces" pattern on top of the inner football (see the picture to understand what this looks like).

3D Printed Results

After a little tweaking, I ended up making the inner football slightly higher than the outer outline shape and gave it rounded edges (using the Filet tool) just to make it look better. I also did a bunch of experimenting with height to get the right balance between strength and flexibility.

The Model

In case you don't feel like starting from scratch to make this yourself, and just want the immediate satisfaction of printing a few (or a few dozen) of these now, I've posted the Football Paper Clip model on Pinshape for you to use.

If you're having people over for the superbowl today, print a few and give them out to your friends ;)

And just in case you think I've created this model because I like paper, I've also created this other paper clip design, shown here, to clarify my position...

I think I'll give these out by the dozen at my kids' schools :)

Here's that "We Hate Paper" Paperclip Model - also free on Pinshape - in case you want to inspire your school to reduce the waste and time innefficiency ;)