2-Minute Pressed Flower Art With 3D Printed Press
by JGJMatt in Workshop > 3D Printing
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2-Minute Pressed Flower Art With 3D Printed Press
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Hello fellow makers,
Pressed flower art is a great project to do with your kids, unfortunately as the flowers can take up to two weeks to dry in conventional presses or books the kids are usually too impatient and the flowers tend to lose their beautiful vibrant colours.
To solve this problem I designed this 3D printable flower press using Tinkercad that can be microwaved to cut down the drying time from two weeks to two minutes.
Let's get making...
What You Will Need:
You will need the following:
- Access to a 3D printer.
- PETG filament.
- White printer paper.
- Corrugated cardboard box.
Normal single walled shipping box not the heavy duty double walled type.
- Flowers and leaves to press.
- Glass picture frame
*As an Amazon Associate I receive a small percentage from sales made through provided links at no cost to you, this helps fund future projects.
Designing the Press:
On Tinkercad I used only basic shapes to make this press and it is really simple to adjust to your needs.
I started with a 10mm high square that's 120x120mm and added some fillets to the corners.
Then I made the hinge using a cylinder, a square and triangle put together. Remember to easily centre the objects onto each other select the shapes and use "L" on your keyboard.
Using a "hole" cylinder I make a cavity for the top hinge.
The top hinge is simply a duplicate of the bottom hinge that has been shortened and mirrored.
The clip is simply a flap made from the same shapes as the hinge buy with an additional triangle that will clip into a cavity in the bottom part of the press that is a duplicate of the triangle that is slightly enlarged and switched to "hole" from "solid".
Printing the Press:
The press was printed in PETG as it will heat up whilst in the microwave and also the added stiffness compared to ABS works well.
I printed the press with zero top and bottom layers for the large centre square as we want the steam generated whilst heating to escape easily and it also saves a lot of printing material and time.
In order to only print a certain part of the model with no top and bottom layers we need to add a modifier.
PrusaSlicer
Start by right clicking on the model and select Add modifier and select Box.
Size the modifier box to 120X120X10mm and centre it on the model.
Click the editing button next to Generic Box and choose Infill.
Now choose a Infill pattern and fill density. In my final print I used 20% Gyroid infill.
The rest of the model is printed with 100% infill.
My print settings are as follows:
Material: PETG
Speed: 40mm/s
Temp: 240 degC Nozzle and 90 degC Bed
Nozzle: 0.6mm
Assembling:
Assembling the press is really straight forward and only requires only a small part of the 1.75mm filament you used to print the parts.
Start by aligning the holes of the hinges and press the filament through and cut off the excess, we want about 3mm of excess filament sticking out of either side of the hinge.
To stop the filament from coming out of the hinge I heated up a metal nail with a candle and just melted the ends to form some flat stops.
The Cardboard and Paper:
To successfully dry your flowers we need some absorbent layers on both sides.
Our first layer will be some cardboard from old shipping boxes, this will need to be standard single wall corrugated cardboard as the heavy duty double walled boxes will be too thick for the press and also too hard.
I have Included a frame you can print out to assist in cutting out the paper with some scissors or hobby knife (parents only) to the exact size needed for the press.
To simplify things as I wanted a lot of papers I fired up my laser to cut out the design.
Downloads
Pressing Your Flowers:
With the press now assembled it's time to get the kids and start making those dried flowers.
Start by layering you paper, first a sheet of cardboard then a piece of paper, next comes your freshly picked flower and repeat with paper and cardboard on top of it.
You can now press it closed and clip it into the first indent, you will use this position 95% of the time the indent further down is only if your cardboard is thinner.
Microwave the Flowers:
Now with the flowers in the press we need to move it over to the microwave.
This step will vary between microwaves but I found what works best for me is to use the Defrost setting for two minutes this gave me perfectly dried flowers 99% of the time.
Important!
Never use on full power, always half or less.
After microwaving allow it to cool completely before opening the press.
Ideas:
Here are some awesome ideas you can use your pressed flowers for from fellow Instructable users:
Quick and Easy Pressed Flower Candles by bristlebot
DIY Pressed Flower Card by momoluv
Enjoy!
