Three Fall 3D Printing Projects, Because Apparently I Needed a Seasonal Lantern

Summary

These three fall 3D printing projects turn a set of classic vampire teeth into a Halloween candy bowl, make disposable hot-drink cups easier to hold, and create a modular seasonal lantern with interchangeable panels and an optional clock. Along the way, they explore practical CAD techniques including designing around existing objects, test printing for fit, multicolor inlays, and modular assemblies.

Starting with the important stuff: giant vampire teeth

Remember those little plastic vampire teeth?

When I was a kid, those and a black cape were approximately all the planning required for a Halloween costume. A coworker suggested turning them into a candy bowl, which seemed like an entirely reasonable use of CAD software.

The basic idea was simple: take the familiar vampire teeth and make them substantially less practical to put in your mouth.

I started by measuring the original teeth. The exact scale wasn't particularly important, but the original already had the shape I wanted. There was no reason to redesign a perfectly good set of fake vampire teeth when I could simply make them enormous.

The lower jaw was straightforward. I filled in the bottom enough to turn it into a usable bowl.

The upper jaw required a little more thought.

I could have made the entire thing as one piece, but that would require printing a substantial amount of support material whose primary purpose would be going directly into the trash.

Instead, I separated the upper jaw.

Without it, the lower section works as a slightly unsettling open-mouth candy bowl. Add the upper teeth and the whole thing starts looking like the plastic vampire teeth I remember, except now they can hold enough candy to become a structural concern.

I added printed ribs between the jaws to hold everything open. They can also be glued in place if you'd rather not have the upper teeth unexpectedly snap down on somebody reaching for a miniature candy bar.

And, obviously, there's glow-in-the-dark filament.

It's Halloween. I don't make the rules.

This is one of those projects where a large-format 3D printer is especially useful. More build volume means more vampire teeth, which means more candy.

There is probably a mathematical relationship there.

Fortunately, the model can also be scaled to whatever size makes sense for your printer, candy supply, and commitment to the bit.

Occasionally the printer makes useful things

Having established that a 3D printer can make giant novelty teeth, I felt it was important to produce evidence that it can also solve an actual problem.

My grandma's new place has coffee available, along with the usual fall rotation of hot cocoa, apple cider, and other beverages specifically designed to remind you that summer is over.

The drinks come in disposable cups.

Unfortunately, those cups get hot, don't have handles, and are narrow enough at the bottom to be surprisingly easy to tip over.

So I made a reusable holder for them.

The holder substantially surrounds the disposable cup, keeping the hot surface away from your hands. It also provides a wide base for stability and a proper handle.

When the drink is finished, the disposable cup simply lifts out.

Because I was making this specifically for Grandma, leaving it plain seemed like a missed opportunity. Her favorite animal is an owl, so I added an owl design.

That also led to a more general version that can be customized directly in Bambu Studio.

Customizing the cup in Bambu Studio

The basic cup holder can be imported into Bambu Studio and decorated without having to modify the original CAD model.

Select the cup, open the color painting tool, choose the filament color you want, and start drawing directly onto the model.

For example, I drew a simple leaf on one side.

Then I added another to the opposite side because apparently leaves require bilateral symmetry.

Once the design is finished, slice the plate and print it.

The colored details aren't separate decorations that have to be printed and glued onto the holder. They're integrated directly into the print as inlays.

That makes it easy to create a personalized version without turning the project into an assembly job.

It also means there's no particularly good reason for everybody to have the same cup holder.

The lantern was supposed to be simple

My wife decorates our mantle really nicely for fall.

I decided I should contribute.

This is historically how projects begin.

I wanted to make a fall lantern, with the ultimate measure of success being whether my wife leaves it on the mantle or quietly removes it after I walk away.

But making an entire lantern for one season seemed unnecessarily restrictive. The frame itself doesn't know what month it is, so I designed interchangeable decorative panels instead.

The frame stays the same while the panels slide in and out.

Halloween comes out. Fall goes in. Eventually Christmas panels can replace those. Then something else can replace Christmas.

This may continue indefinitely.

I deliberately kept the openings simple. Each one accepts a 5-by-7-inch rectangle, so there's no requirement to use my printed panels.

You could use:

• 3D printed panels
• Acrylic
• A photograph
• Glass from a photo frame
• A laser-cut panel
• Something considerably more creative than anything I've listed

If you have a machine with laser-cutting capability, such as an H2D with the appropriate attachment, the standard rectangular opening gives you plenty of room to experiment.

The complicated solution loses

Making interchangeable panels introduced a small mechanical problem.

The panels need to come out easily enough to actually be interchangeable, but they also need to stay in place well enough that gravity doesn't perform the interchange for you.

At one point I designed a fairly elaborate rotating retention mechanism.

After spending hours on that, I replaced it with something much simpler.

This happens more often than I'd like to admit.

The final design uses a sliding lock and friction to hold everything together. Getting the fit right still took several iterations and a number of test prints, but the mechanism itself is simple.

That left me with a perfectly functional seasonal lantern.

Which was apparently a problem.

A lantern that earns its shelf space

If this thing was going to occupy space on a shelf for several months, I started wondering whether it could do something besides sit there looking seasonal.

So I made a clock face.

The same frame can now be built as a normal lantern, or you can install a clock movement and turn it into a functional timepiece.

For lighting, a normal battery-powered tea light works fine.

I used one with an automatic timer. It stays on for six hours, switches off for 18 hours, and repeats the cycle. That means once it's set up, I can mostly forget it exists.

Which is exactly the level of maintenance I want from seasonal decor.

Keep battery-powered lights away from materials if the light or battery compartment becomes unusually hot. I would not use an open flame inside a 3D printed lantern.

Print the mistake smaller

All three projects required getting dimensions and clearances right.

Instead of printing an entire part every time I changed a fit, I printed small sections containing only the geometry I needed to test.

That saves time and filament.

For the vampire teeth, cup holder, and lantern, these little test pieces let me verify mating surfaces, clearances, and retention before committing to the full print.

This is one of my favorite ways to iterate on functional prints. Isolate the uncertain dimension, print only that area, make the adjustment, and repeat.

The downside is that eventually you have a collection of tiny plastic scraps.

For some reason, mine tend to accumulate in the bottom of the printer despite the presence of a fully operational trash can nearby.

A diaper for the printer

BIQU provided me with an accessory called the Panda Diaper.

Yes, that is its name.

It gives those scraps and bits of filament somewhere to collect instead of letting them accumulate at the bottom of the printer.

It's a very simple accessory, which is part of why I like it. Cleaning out the bottom of the printer becomes ridiculously easy, it looks like it belongs there, and the printer somehow feels a little more finished.

That is considerably more enthusiasm than I expected to have for a product with the word "diaper" in its name.

Three excuses to keep printing

These projects ended up going in three very different directions.

The vampire teeth mostly exist because they make me smile.

The coffee cup holder has actually been used by both Grandma and me for hot drinks, so I can point to that one whenever anybody questions whether the printer produces useful objects.

And the lantern became the sort of project I particularly enjoy. The original problem was simple, but solving it created opportunities for interchangeable panels, different fabrication methods, a sliding retention system, lighting, and eventually a clock.

More importantly, it doesn't have to disappear when fall ends. Swap the panels and it can keep earning its shelf space throughout the year.

That's probably what I like most about 3D printing this time of year.

I could buy a candy bowl.

I could buy a coffee cup holder.

I could definitely buy a lantern.

But none of those would be these.