Sarah Goehrke‘s husband commissioned these custom logo earrings for his wife as a unique and highly personalized Christmas present. I later learned that not only does she have a very cool logo, but she’s one of the most prominent women in the 3D printing industry! That was definitely a pleasant surprise.
Deciding on a design path
His original idea was for me to design a customized fidget spinner from her company’s logo, but since I didn’t have any experience doing that, we decided on earrings instead.
I had a few ideas of how to approach the design, so I asked the client to provide me with a high quality image file of her logo. Then, I loaded the logo into Adobe Illustrator and began with some cleanup work to get them ready for doing design concepts. I also created a .dxf file of the logo to import into my CAD software later down the line.
Design concepts
Once I had the logo ready to work with, I created three different basic options for the client to choose from. Two were medallion-style earrings, and the third had more of a lace-like effect to it, with open spaces between the design elements. All three design concepts have a white base with the logo embossed on it in dark blue.
The client loved Concept 3, and asked if I could also put them on earring wires and gift wrap the final product as well.
I did a little bit of additional adjustment to the line thicknesses in Illustrator, then began working on the 3D model in CAD.
3D modeling
Creating the 3D model proved to be an interesting challenge, since I had to manually adjust several of the shapes. I learned very quickly how the line trimming tool in my CAD software works, which helped immensely with making sure I didn’t have any open contours or floating lines.
Eventually, I had a 3D model I was happy with, but I still had to make sure my 3D printer could handle it.
Improving 3D printability
At that time, I didn’t yet have the 0.25mm high-detail printer nozzles that I now use for intricate pieces like this. So, to make sure that I could capture as much of the logo’s details as possible, I created a 0.4mm “template” circle in my CAD file to drag around on top of the design and confirm all of the line work was thick enough to print correctly.
Next up was adding the attachment ring for the earring wire, and making them comfortable to wear. The sharp corners of her logo could poke into her neck, so I rounded those edges in the white base to improve comfort.
After some more adjustment and a little bit of tweaking to make sure the details wouldn’t blur together, I had a model I was happy with.
3D proofs
I loaded the 3D model into my slicing software and added in the color change so that I could send a 3D mockup to my client. He was very happy with them, and gave me the go-ahead to get them onto the 3D printer.
The final product
The final height of each earring was just under 1.75″ (44.5mm) and the width came out to 1.5″ (38mm). I did a little bit of cleanup work on the finished prints, and once I had the client’s approval, I added earring wires to them.
I then boxed them up nicely in a gift box and added a green fabric ribbon for a special fancy touch.