Making of Custom 3D Print Horns

For Halloween 2022, I wanted a set of wearable demon horns I could easily wear to the work Halloween Party, were unique, and didn't cost much money. As this was a "short notice" costume idea, I decided to challenge myself to see if I could come up with a set of wearable 3d printable horns that I could design and print in a weekend.

• 3D Sculpting Program (I used Zbrush)
• Digital Drawing Tablet (optional but makes it easier to digitally sculpt)
• 3D scanner (Optional)
• 3D Printer
• 3D Filament (ABS or PLA)
• Sandpaper
• Headband ( I used https://www.printables.com/model/267044-regular-headband)
• Hot Glue
• Super Glue
• Spray Paint
• Painters or Masking Tape

I own a Pop 2 Revopoint 3d scanner (https://www.revopoint3d.com/) and it is one of the better budget 3d scanners I've owed and used for scanning faces and small objects. Using it, I was able to create a self scan of my face that I could take into zBrush to clean up and use as a base to create a wearable horn design.

I had no design plan initially going into this project and ended up looking mostly at designs and artwork though Pinterest as I worked to create a basic shape of the horn(s) I wanted. Starting out with a primitive cylinder shape, I was able to manipulate the object using zBrush's move, smooth, inflate, trim dynamic, and various clay brushes. The ending block out result was designed with the intent to weave my hair to cover parts of the horns.

Detailing the horns, I used a combination of clay tube, dam standard, pinch and custom noise brushes to give texture and depth to the design.

To reduce print time, plastic, and required print supports I ended up hollowing the model out and splitting each horn into 3 parts. This allowed me to orientate each piece so optimal detail is retained at printing with larger layer heights. Hollowing out the pieces reduced the weight. I only had to prep two of the 4 horns as the 3d print slicer software I primarily use has a mirror on axis function built in.

Design took approximately 16-18 hours to print all four horns and was left to print mostly over night on a Wanhao Duplicator i3 clone in a PLA filament. An additional 20 minutes was needed to print out the sourced headband design from printables.com. The design overall used approximately 0.6lb of plastic filament to print with the print supports.

Print settings:

Layer Height: 0.3 mm

Speed: 55 mm/s

Infill: 15%

Infill Type: Full Honeycomb

Supports: Yes

Rafts: No

Sand parts down. Assembled with super glue. I used salt to speed up the glue's curing.

I decided to reusing some spray paint I had on hand from past projects. Outside I gave the prints a quick coat of primer, sanded down the horns again before spraying the prints again with a light coat of black.

Painters tape was used to temporarily attach the horns to the headband so I could do a fitting adjustment before hot gluing the pieces into place.

A quick paint touch up job to cover the hot glue was needed.

Overall, I was happy result. The headset was light enough to wear throughout the day that many times I forgot I was wearing it. I may break out the airbrush in the future and give these printable horns some varied color.