Resin Printing Earrings

Do you have a resin printer? Do you have your ears pierced or know someone with their ear pierced?

Congratulations! You have all the tools to make any design of earrings you want!

I'm going to go over

1. Making flat shapes for stud earrings from scratch
2. Modifying an existing 3D model to use for dangly earrings or studs

Tools:

• A resin printer
• 3D modeling software (I will use Fusion 360 but use whatever you are most comfortable with)
• Needle nose pliers

Materials:

• Earring Blanks
• Here is a link to stud earrings
• Here is a link for dangly earring
• I use surgical grade stainless steel for my earrings, but if you have metal sensitivities make sure that the blanks that you order will be okay for your ears.
• 5-minute epoxy or super glue
• Resin
• Sandpaper (I use 220 grit but whatever you have will work)

First, we are going to go over making flat stud earrings.

Once you have an idea for the shape, you simply need to convert it to a sketch in modeling software.

Things to keep in mind:

• I found that the best size was about a 10mm square (~3/8 inch)
• You will need a solid area where the stud blank can go

If you want you can draw a sketch of your design then import it into the 3D modeling software to trace over.

Now extrude your shape. I went with a depth of 1.5 mm (0.06 in).

On the backside, make another sketch and draw a circle that is slightly larger than your earring blank. My blank measured 5.08 mm and the circle I modeled is 5.2 mm. Then exit the sketch and cut the circle out of the earring. I used a depth of 0.5 mm (this is prominently the height of my earring blanks).

For these flat thin flat shapes, it is best to have them off the build plate at about 30 degrees. This uses more resign but the finish is better and they don't break when you're removing them from the bed.

Make sure the backs of the earrings are facing the bed so that the artifacts from the supports are on the backside of the earrings, not the beautiful front.

Also, keep in mind that print time on a resin printer is dependent on height so printing all your earrings at the same time will be the most efficient.

Similarly to the flat earings, we will need a flat space for the blank. You can either use an existing flat space or slice the model to make one. Then we will add a circular cut out in this flat space just like we did in step 2.

The Low Poly Cat model is originally from Andrew_Sink and can be found here: https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/35655/files.

This is the easiest method. Simply add a small hole, slightly larger than the diameter of the wire of the earrings, at the top of the model. My wire measured 0.64mm so I made the hole 0.7mm.

Print out all those sweet earrings! As mentioned in step 3, it will save you printing time to print as many pairs as you want all at once.

Then wash and cure the prints as normal remove the supports. I found that removing the supports after washing but before curing worked the best.

For this step, you can either use epoxy or super glue. I have found that a two-part epoxy is more durable than super glue. I would recommend epoxy unless you absolutely need your earrings right now!!

Use some sandpaper to gently rough up the metal earring blanks on the gluing surface. Then apply a small amount of glue to the blank. Be careful not to use too much as we don't want any squeeze-out.

Now you have some awesome earrings and have unlocked the ability to make as many as you want! Go show them to the world! Make more for your friends!

You are amazing. Thank you for reading my instructable!