3D Printed Customizable Belt Buckles

I designed these belt buckles to use some old belt straps I had. They are very simple yet hold up the pants excellently and can be customized with pretty much every design you can imagine.

For this project you will need:

A 3d printer, I use the Ender 3

Filament, I use PLA

A computer with slicing software

A belt strap with nothing on the ends

A lighter

I designed all of this using tinkercad, and I have made my designs all public on there so you can just download my designs at: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/lwwZuwv3XgV . You can also use the blank belt buckle to add your own design using an image to lithophane generator of which there are plenty but my favorite is: https://3dp.rocks/lithophane/

To make the multicolored belt buckles I print them flat and put in layer stops at the exact layer using Cura's pause at height setting and then changing the filament. If you want to print a plain belt buckle I would recommend just using one of the already curved buckle files.

To add the curve into the multicolored belt buckles that are printed flat I heat up the flat belt buckle using a hair dryer and then squish it in between two pre-printed curved belt buckles.

This part is very important but not too difficult. The goal is to create a little lip that is big enough to stop the strap from being able to pull through the belt buckle. To do this I burned/melted the edge using a lighter and then pressed it against some parchment paper so it didn't stick.

Put it on and let it do it's thing!