For my space-obsessed son‘s birthday, my wife wanted a space-themed topper for his cake. After searching through Thangs/Thingiverse/MakerWorld/Printables and not finding anything she liked, I was given a [space] mission with a couple of requirements:
- The lettering has to be readable – the closest example we could find used a cursive font that’s basically illegible to young children.
- It has to be recolourable – mono-colour prints are objectively boring, and using Bambu Studio’s paint tools on a complex object is subjectively boring.
This is basically the first time I’ve done a design that’s pure art, rather than something functional. I’m no artist by any means, but I’m pretty happy with how this turned out in my favourite gold & silver filaments.
There is an on-going debate about whether prints are food-safe, with arguments focusing on the plastic (does it contain food-safe components), the tools (does brass or steel shed from the printer into the molten filament), and the geometry of the final print (can bacteria hide in the crevices between lines & layers). I have no idea what the correct answer is, so on the rare occasion that we do make something like a cake topper I ensure that the food it comes into contact with is not used – ie cut out the cake around where the stick was and chuck it, and either the object is considered uncleanable and single-use (boo), or I wrap the stick with clingfilm to separate it from the food. It’s certainly an interesting area of research to keep an eye on, as there’s a whole universe of food-related stuff that’s ideal for printing that I don’t feel comfortable exploring at the moment – cookie cutters, novelty cups, plates, kitchen gadgets etc.
Ingredients
Materials
Resources
- Cake Topper – Space [Maker World]
Tools
- BambuLabs P1S with AMS [Link]
Ed Made Something 
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