3d Printing Wearable Jewelry

When I was really young I found a necklace that had a live cactus growing in it from Amazon. I bought it and loved how it had a little plant inside of it and that it was easy to take care of. A few years later the cactus out grow the necklace and I never worn it since. When the wearable contest come out I didn't know what to make until I looked at my plant necklace. I have a 3d printer so might as well try to print a necklace that could hold a little cactus or plant in it. To my surprise it came out quite nice and it didn't take very long to print. I had to sand it just a little on the top were there are those 90 degree overhangs.

1. 3d printer

2. sand/soil

3. plant

4. Led(led version)

5.switch(led version)

6.wire(led version)

7.batterys(led version)

There are two files one is a little pot for the plant and sand to placed in and the other is the from that goes around the pot. Since plastics shrink and expand the pot may not fit very nicely into the from so if you do print this then you may need to shrink or increase the size of the pot just a little in the slicer of choice. The printer I'm using is the Ender 3 Pro which is around 200 US dollars. If you got a more expensive printer the necklace should turn out even better then the ones I'm getting from mine. I also modeled this in inventor which is a really easy cad program that you can use to make cool things like this. The hole on top is used to place a little string in it so you can wear it around your neck like a normal necklace.

This step is straight forward you just need to add the the soil or in my case sand to the tiny little pot. I used a pair a tweezers to make a little hole in the middle of the pot then used the tweezers to grab the cactus and put it in the little hole that was created. You then should leave it in the pot for a few days to a week to allow the roots to move around and grip the substrate a little better so the plant says in place. I used some thread that was the desired length for me and pulled it through the little hole on the top of the frame of the necklace and then tied the two ends of the string together.

This is the version were you can add a little led to your necklace so it can light up when it gets dark. This would be a cool light if you are camping or just walking around in the dark. This can be kind of difficult to assemble if you don't have patience and a steady hand. I used a small Led that I found in my horde of electronic stuff( A regular size led should work just fine with this). The batterys are from a little helicopter thing that broke and I took the batterys from that and found a little holder for them on Thingiverse and scaled it down to fit the size of the batterys. The switch is also from my stash but any switch should work you just got to modify the model a little bit. I then took everything and placed them as were they should go and then soldered the components together. I didn't have a steady hand and kind of melted a little spot on the frame but it looks pretty good. If any of you make this version I would love to see a picture of it. (:

It is now ready to be worn around and shown it off to your friends and family or be used as a gift for someone.
Please comment below if you liked this project and vote for me in the wearable contest! (:

Thanks,

The_crafty_guy