Adventures with CAD-ing gifts

(using school budget)

I enjoy making gifts for people I love. There’s something that warms me when my friend smiles at a collage of her favourite photos immortalized on acrylic, or my other friend gently snickers as he skims his fingers over a wood-engraved caricature of him as a frog. Yet this blog post is about my adventures CAD-ing, not laser-cutting/engraving. 

A few months ago, I started trying to CAD and print objects I wanted that were a little tricky to buy or make otherwise. A flower-shaped ring holder for my nightstand, a fancier clip to hold old mementos on my wall, and a toothbrush cap. I wondered if it was possible to transfer my calligraphy and mandala-designing skills to 3D printing.

Hmm. A close friend’s birthday was coming up. I had one week to design the perfect gift and get it printed for her visit. Why not start out with a calligraphed version of the first letter of her name? I first tried free-handing what I wanted it to look like on paper, using a fountain pen to get a natural feel to it. I then employed a favourite trick: scanning the letter, and uploading it to my laptop - and then inserting it as a reference through a sketch tool. This allowed me to make multiple splines over top, essentially duplicating the letter into Solidworks. After editing a few of the splines to ensure that the shape was closed, I could extrude it - and had an STL file ready. Here’s what it looked like:

Printing times are quite reasonable. Two iterations of the S took a total just around an hour - enough for me to start the print process, grab dinner with a friend, and come back to two prints on my way back to my dorm (which was right above the Makerspace, accessible through a shortcut that I had found a couple months ago).

Since then, I’ve made a few more letters (K, N, R, and a subpar A). Each new design came a little quicker and easier. I will definitely be trying to make a few full first names this summer for printing in the fall.