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About a year ago, I wrote a post about what I’d learned from trying to sell 3D printed lamps. Armed with those leanings, I’m making my second attempt at selling 3D printed objects. This time, not alone.
My partner, Bre, and I have started selling Jibbirdz. They are 3D printed shoe charms (things to decorate crocs and other holey shoes) of native New Zealand birds. For each charm sold, we donate $1 to a bird conservation charity, starting with Forest and Bird.
The four Jibbirdz that we are selling as a pack. From left to right, North Island Kokako, Piwakawaka/fantail, Tui and Kereru.
It all started a few years ago when I gave my partner her first pair of crocs for her birthday. Along with the crocs, I designed and printed a few shoe charms (Jibbitz in crocs lingo). They were just simple designs of a few native birds as she is a big bird lover. Over the next while, she got a lot of positive comments on how cool they were. Then she suggested that I try and print some nicer ones and we try to sell them and give some money to bird related charities. I liked the idea, so we started working on it. Bre initially drew the designs and I turned them into CAD models and worked out how to print them nicley. The first few prints weren’t very good, but the process quickly came together. Once we had a set of prototypes we were happy with, we printed and assembled 55 of each of the four birds we’d designed. Since launching our website, less than a week ago, we’ve sold almost half of our initial inventory. I think it’s going quite well.
The original sketch for the Kereru.
The first prototype. It doesn’t look very good.
We have lots of ideas for more designs and ways to promote the birds of New Zealand that we’ll be exploring in the future.
Jibbirdz are 3D printed in two parts, the main face that is seen when it’s on a croc, and the plug/mushroom on the back that keeps it attached to the croc. The two halves are then glued together. For the main face, a 0.3 mm nozzle is used, which gives more detail than the 0.6 mm nozzle I normally use. The colour is only on the top two layers (for a total of 0.3mm of thickness) which is enough to get a nicely saturated colour. Colour changes are manual as I don’t have a multi material system. The top surface is ironed which gives a more uniform finish and reduces visibility of the extrusion path. Once off the printer, the top faces are sanded with 220 grit, then 600 grit sandpaper to give a uniform, matte surface finish which I think looks really good.
55 Tuis just finished printing.
This whole process is somewhat time consuming and I’d like to improve it in the future. Potential ways it could be improved are:
That’s all for now. I’ll probably write an update about how things are going and what else we’ve done with Jibbirdz in the future.
