Making a 3d Printed Bowl with a Hairdryer

Fun 3d printed project with none of the technical hassles. People sometimes shy away from 3d printing because it looks so complicated. I wanted to make something simple that people could play with and easily customize, a little something that they could hold in their hands and shape with nothing but a hair dryer and some light pressure.

Plus, if people can touch it and control it, shape it with heat and get comfortable with the material, then they might be more interested in learning about 3d printing. It's not so scary once you realize it's just regular plastic that has been heated up until it can be bent and sculpted. That's why they call it "thermos plastic" after all.

Expando changoooo...  take a simple home hair dryer a to a thin PLA 3d print and you can shape it and bend it into any form you want. The best (and worst) of both worlds.

So you can see where the lines started to string and the lip got deformed, but that's mostly from a lack of control with the hair dryers.

I knew that thin 3d prints could be reshaped with a common hair dryer, so I designed a simple lattice that I could print really quickly.

I have played around with these types of lattice structures before. I've made them out of paper and craft-foam and even cloth. So I knew a few shapes and cutting patterns that expand nicely when they get deformed








I hoped that the 3d prints would expand and shape nicely, and more importantly, I hoped that they would hold there shape and remain sturdy once they cooled back down.

The paper and foam versions are fun to play with,  but they don't hold their shape when released. They collapse back into a flat sheet. It's fun to make accordion shapes that you can stretch and twist and bounce, but I wanted the lattice to keep it's shape.

So 3d printer plastic (specifically PLA) seemed like a good bet.

It started life as a flat sheet.

Then it got heated and pressed onto a sphere to deform the lattice.

And it worked really well. The PLA did stretch and expand much like the craft-foam, but it held it's shape perfectly when it cooled down.

There are some issues I want to work on. You'll notice that the print became "stringy" and the edges are warped. I printed the lattice so thin that the individual "print lines" acted as strings and I turned the hair dryer on high, so the strings became so flexible they actually got blown around by the air. I wanted them to separate and expand uniformly, not like a wild hair day. Even the edges got softened and deformed.

The fix should be easy. I can print the lattice thicker, I can use a lower heat and blower setting - or I can even put the lattice into a toaster oven and let it gently drape over a form from the force of gravity.

And I could make a simple frame to hold the edges so that they don't deform while the center of the lattice gets all rubbery and stretchy. Lots of ideas to play with.









This is just a simple bowl. But the same technique can be used to create jewelry like bracelets and necklaces. A more advanced maker could create hats and other fashion accessories. Those 3d printed arm and leg braces that you've seen, well they are often heat formed for the final fit.

And individual parts can be "welded" together to form larger pieces. So the brim and bowl of a hat could be printed separately, formed to the user's liking, then be combined into a finished hat.

More importantly, most people are comfortable drawing a flat 2d design. And they have bent various materials for years with their bare hands.

With this technique anyone can draw a simple 2d pattern, print it out in minutes, then heat form it into the shape they want. Once they do that, maybe they will want to start doing the same thing in 3d.

Just another way to gently introduce people to 3d design... muhahahaaaaa.

Also made a bra, or maybe a hat, with this technique.

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