Originally conceived of for dressing up family pets, these tiny hats with integrated LED quickly gained traction on human heads. Perfect for any occassion, fits most heads except mine (needs hair).
Overview of 3D work
Some of the hat designs were modelled from scratch, others were downloaded from 3rd party CAD sites and needed to be hollowed out, fitted with a lid and some screw holes. I was typically able to get an .stl file for the 3rd party hats, which I brought directly into Blender. Solidworks isn’t able to handle complex surface geometry very well, so I decimated the models to where they only had a few thousand surfaces, then exported them into Solidworks. I created the mechanical features in within Solidworks, then exported only the mechanical bits back into the Blender model.
Process
- Import .stl model into Blender.
- Use varying techniques including the decimate modifier to make sure the file isn’t going to give Solidworks a heart attack
- Export as .wrl and bring into Solidworks
- Create mechanical geometry as needed, export only that geometry as .wrl
- Import the mechanical .wrl file and union it with the rest of the model
- Export to a slicer of your choice
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Fabrication
I 3D printed these on my homemade Voron 2.4 printer, which took about 3.5 hrs each. There wasn’t much post-processing to do on these, other than installing the heat set threaded inserts and a thin coat of XTC-3D epoxy.
The basic circuit
The circuit is a very basic one. A CR2032 coin cell resides in a holder and an LED is connected to the negative terminal and positive terminal through a switch. There is low enough current that the LED does not burn out, and lasts for a surprisingly long time!
End result
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| Tiny hat adds to the festivities |
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| A non-lit poop emoji hat for “shithead” a.k.a. Indigo |
