Latte Art

10 easy steps to impress your friends and make the world wonder how you made such a beautiful latte using a custom 3d printed latte stencil.

3d printer

Fillament (Since the stencil doesn’t touch the drink and only dry powder passes through it, PLA or PETG is fine. Just wash it before use)

Computer

Milk frother/steamer (steamer is better, but frother will work)

Time: 30–60 minutes in Blender, plus print time

Download and install Blender (I am using blender for windows). Choose light or dark mode. (Here I use dark)

Open Blender. Select 'General' from the menu on the left. a to select everything and then delete (to delete).

To move around in Blender, click with the scroll wheel and move the mouse.

Press Shift+A → Mesh → Circle. In the lower‑left Add Circle panel, set the number of vertices to 64 for a smooth circle. Position the circle to match your cup diameter (100mm works pretty well)

Press Tab to go into 'edit mode'. Then Shift+a, and add a circle. While everything is still orange (selected), click the 'add circle' box in the lower left. Immediately change the radius from 1 to 0.09m using the box to the bottom right (otherwise it will disappear). With everything still selected, hit 'f'.

e to extrude, and in the panel to the lower left, set the z to be about 0.00125m.

Shift+d to duplicate the circle and then hold shift and move the second circle to just touch the edge of the first one. Then scale the second circle so it is about one fifth the size of the original circle (s) and move the second circle into the big one (using g+x). make sure both circles have the same Z thickness so the stencil prints evenly.

Find an svg of the art you would like on your coffee (google search) , simple images work better.

File→import→Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)

Click on your art, and go to data in the right sidebar. make the extrude value 0.002m. Then, right click on the art and select convert to mesh.

Center your art on the stencil (alt+z will make everything transparent)

Then, select the circle and go to modifiers (wrench tab) in the right sidebar. Select a boolean modifier, set the solver to float, and with the eyedropper, select your artwork.

In the top right corner, select all the eye icons associated with your artwork (usually listed as 'curve') and hide them.

go to file→export→stl and save your file.

Import the model into your slicer (it will probably import very small, scaling uniformly so the is x dimension is 140mm works pretty well).

To use the stencil, start with latte topped with a bed of foamed milk with as few large bubbles as possible. place the stencil over the cup, and with a sieve, dust the stencil gently with cinnamon (or a similar fine dark spice).

And you're done!

Thanks for following along, see you next time!