Who know my attitude know that i use 3d printers most of all for mechanical or electronic projects or eventually home repairs. Anyway, sometime 3d printers come to be useful for others too, and usually this reveal to be true when printing relatively easy and simple designs.

This time my creative wife, that runs a little etsy shop    and also a blog about weddings and parties who sells mostly beautiful handcrafted decorations for events like weddings and parties, come to ask me if i can print some alphabet letters to be used as candy holders for candy tables, starting from some simple 2d images. Of course i agreed, it’s my wife, can i say “no” to her?

This was one of the images she give me:

So, the first job is to transform this flat image to something i can print. This is done by using several (open source) softwares, in order:

1. imagemagik to change the image color palette from RGB to 1 bit (black and white only) palette.
2. inkscape, to trace the bitmap and then translate the image in a vectorial format, saving it as a “DXF” image
3. openscad, “extruding” the image and manipulating it as a 3d model to make it the way i need

This is the final model, ready to be exported in STL format ( a well know and commonly used 3d model format used on most models for 3d printing ):

Then, from there, i sliced as usual the image using CURA to generate the GCODE needed by the 3d printer, and let’s start to print it out, using purple PLA as requested:

The final product:

You welcome, my love :)

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