3D Design with Play-Doh

Getting the family involved with 3D printing and scanning is a lot of fun. For this project Sami, who is 4 years old, 3D designed a snowman ornament using 3D scanning on the ZEUS All-In-One 3D Printer. We finished it by decorating it up for a fun Christmas project. Its never too early to get kids involved with STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and math) learning. We started with a quick trip to the store to pick up a fresh batch Play-Doh. Sami used her ample Play-Doh skills to make a simple snowman out of a cool blue colored Play-Doh.

Preparing to 3D Scan

We then placed the finished Play-Doh snowman into the ZEUS 3D printer and scanner. Sami selected the scan option on the ZEUS and set the printer for a high quality scan. High quality wasn’t really necessary for such a simple object but we had plenty of time so high quality is was!

3D Scanning the Object

The ZEUS All-In-One 3D printer was able to do a full scan of the object in roughly 20 minutes. The rotating turntable/build plate spun the object around as the laser swiped across it and the camera captured the snowman into a 3D file.

3D Printing

We removed the Play-Doh snowman from the ZEUS and selected the PRINT option. We decided to scale the snowman up 20% so he would be a tad bigger than the original. We printed it out using white PLA with 10% infill and a medium resolution of 0.2 mm. The print operation took about 4 hours to complete.

Final Decorating

To finish up the snowman we glued a half of a small magnetic necklace clasp (from a craft store) to the top of the snowman and attached an ornament hook so it could be hung on the tree. We used some Elmer’s spray glue and glitter to give the snowman some glittery shine. We used a small section of red ribbon to make the snowman a scarf. Finally we glued some small buttons on to give our snowman eyes, nose, and a coat. Our snowman was done! Sami was super excited and proud of what we made and we both had a great time making it.