3D Printed Rubber Duck Earrings

A few years ago, a friend asked me for something unusual, a rubber duck earring! So with the help of 3D printing technology and some jewelry materials, we managed to do it! And it even turned out cute! :)

• 3D Printer
• PLA filement
• Yellow - for the duck's body
• Orange - for the duck's mouth
• Black - for the eyes
• Super Glue or glue of choice
• Pliers (with long nose)
• 4 Hooks and 2 jump rings for earings
• Lighter or Mini Torch
• STL-File:

Print each of the files separately, to have the parts in the correct colors, but if you have a printer with multi-material capacity it is possible to print all the parts together and in the correct colors.

I used yellow PLA for the body, orange for the beak and black for the eyes.

The files already contain the correct quantity of parts to assemble a pair of earrings:

• "RubberDuck_body.stl" - has 2 bodies
• "RubberDuck_eyes.stl" - has 4 eyes
• "RubberDuck_mouth.stl" - has 2 mouths

The print settings I used:

• No support (for any party)
• 10% infill
• 0.15 Layer height
• 3 walls

Using super glue, glue each part in place. At the end of the assembly process, you will have 2 ducks

In this step, we will use 2 hooks and transform them into a rod to be placed on the duck's head, so that we have a place to place the ring and the other hooks.

Using pliers, cut the hook as shown in the photos. What we need is just the bottom part of the hooks, as shown in the photos, you can discard the rest.

In this step we will place the rod that we created in the previous step, on the duck's head. To do this we will need a mini blowtorch (or a lighter) and pliers.

With the pliers, hold the rod and with the torch, heat the tip of the rod until it becomes white-hot.

Once the tip of the rod becomes red-hot, "stick" the rod into the center of the duck's head. The plastic on the duck's head will melt and the rod will go inside the duck's head.

Be "gentle" when placing the rod on the duck's head. If you do it too quickly or too hard, you could damage the printed piece.

When placing the rod in place, blow the rod with your mouth so that it can cool faster and remain in place.

With the rods securely attached to the duck's head, we can place the ring and hook.

Using pliers, open the ring enough to fit through the hole in the rod and hook.

First place the ring on the rod in the duck's head and then place the hook.

Using the pliers again, bring the ends of the ring together to close it and keep everything securely attached.

and that's it!

enjoy!