Our family celebrates Pi Day. As part of it, my younger daughter wanted to make some earrings she could wear to school. I modeled them to her specifications, we 3D-printed them, and then spray-painted them. I wanted to cast them in metal, but I was having trouble and we had a deadline, so the plastic versions were what we went with. I think they came out great. She wore them to school on March 14th.
Here's a close-up.
Trying to cast them (February and March 2022)
Here's the wax pattern cast from the 3D print, in blue. Oh hey, it worked.
Then I tried again, with what I thought was a better sprue design. This one is printed in grey resin.
That earring is slightly convex, like a contact lens. I failed many times to cast it in brass and aluminum bronze, but I learned a lot doing it. In the end I just printed it and spray-painted it.
Pi Day 2023
The next year, my younger daughter had another Pi Day earring concept in mind: a sphere made up of the digits of pi. I worked through the math for it in OpenSCAD.
This was the prototype, printed in white resin and coming together a few days before Pi Day. The design is hers.
The finished earrings were done just under the wire on March 14th. I'm not sure why she wanted black, but they are as ordered.
Here's a better picture, after she highlighted the numbers.
Another look at the prototype.
