customisable ice cube mold by alphahelix

Last crawled date: 2 years, 10 months ago

Easily create personalised ice cubes
No CAD skills required
Simple print. No supports.
Also useful as molds for kinetic sand or play-doh
Included examples (.stl):
ICE
GIN
RUM
IMPORTANT: Ice molds require flexible filament
The safety of 3d printed materials for food preparation is highly debated
I personally use filament that is certified as food-safe (Eolas Prints TPU, Spain)
I also use a non-toxic hardened steel nozzle, rather than a standard brass nozzle
If you've never printed with flexible filaments before:
it's definitely worth a try!
start with a semi-flexible filament (e.g. 95A TPU)
start with this design (Seriously. It's dead easy.)
To release the ice, run hot water on the back of the mold, and then extract with a blunt knife.
The more flexible the filament, the easier the extraction.
How to customise:
Install the free software OpenSCAD
Do a 30 min online tutorial to learn the basics (use the editor, preview, render, and save as .stl)
Download the sledge typeface
Install the typeface so it's accessible to OpenSCAD (see forum)
Move gin_ice_mold_demo.scad and icemold.scad to the same directory and open gin_ice_mold_demo.scad in OpenSCAD.
Modify the text. Modify mold_length_x to change the length of the ice cube.
preview (F5), render (F6), and save as .stl
Note: if you don't want any wall text, just change the variables to empty strings (e.g. wall_text_lhs_top = "";).
Further info:
Many thanks to the support of my work colleagues at Munich-based TNG Technology Consulting GmbH. The initial concept came from a hobby project during a TNG Techday (similar to Google's "20% time").
The design is also on GitHub. The OpenSCAD code is released under a permissive licence that allows commercial use.