Making Architectural Details With a 3D Printer

I live in an apartment within a 120 year old historical building. The Apartments were built "new" 10 years ago but retained some historical features like 10 foot ceilings and lots of millwork (fancy trim) around doors and windows. The building is named the "King Edward" and its logo is a Crown. Above each door and window inside the apartment there is a plain "panel" that just screams for some architectural detail. What better than a 3D Crown glued in the center.

• 3D Printer
• White Silicone (to attach the Crown to the panel)

In order to create the 3D crown I found a PDF the had a good image of the crown and expanded it to get a large clear view. I then clipped the image and saved it as a JPG. Using an online converter site (https://convertio.co/jpg-svg/) I converted the file to SVG and using the import feature I imported it into Tinkercad allowing me to modify the crown for 3D printing.

In Tinkercad I created a Square and took a half moon out of it using the hole function, then converted the whole shape to a "hole". I sized the shape to cover the imported crown and joined them to add a curve the full width of the crown. Next I wanted the cross at the top of the crown to be inset a bit so I created a "hole" and placed it over the top and lifted it off the bed and joined the shapes. I did the same at the bottom of the crown to inset the bottom curve.

Finally I exported the Crown as an STL to be used on my 3D printer.

I printed the Crown on my 3D printer using white filament as my walls panels are white and then the crowns do not need to be painted. Taping the test print crown to a panel allowed me to stand to make sure the sizing was correct. Once I tweaked the sizing I printed the final crowns. Four crowns were needed: three doors and one window.

Mark the center point of each panel and use Silicone to attach the crown to the wall by placing juts a few dots of it on the "solid" areas of the crown. The crown is very light as 3D prints are pretty much hollow and light plastic (PLA) but I still used some green painters tape to hold the crown in place until the Silicon set (I gave it 24 hours).

Using white Silicon has several advantages:

1. White Silicon will blend with the wall if a bit leaks out between the small holes in the crown
2. It is "permanent" yet "removable", the crown will not fall off but if you want to remove it you can peel it off (you may need to pull thin fishing line behind the crown to break the seal) and then remove the residue with something like "Goof Off"
3. As opposed to using things like double sided tape the Silicone does not have a gap between the wall and the crown making it look more like part of the architecture

I now have a 3D Crown architectural detail above each door and window inside my apartment giving it a vintage feel with a very low cost. As the crowns are the same color as the panel and are 9 ft up they are very subtle but I feel like they are something that would have been done 120 years ago when the building was first built.