An official stamp for the 3D Lab

The finished stamp
The finished stamp

I got a roll of TPU Soft filament from our very good partner, Suomen 3D-Ratkaisut Oy. Thinking of uses for it (so far we had printed an insole for a shoe for an innovation course project) it occurred to me that maybe it is soft enough to use for creating stamps, so I gave it a try. This time I’ll just list the sequence of the work so you can recreate them step by step.

  1. Create a cube of the dimensions you want the stamp to have. Mine is 45 x 55 mm.
  2. Apply Location, Rotation, and Scale. This is necessary for getting the Bevel of the edges to work properly.
  3. Select the vertical edges at the corners, and press Ctrl+B for Bevel. When you move the mouse, you will see the corners beveled. Use mouse wheel for adding more edges to round the bevel.
  4. We are now making the outline of the stamp, so copy the stamp, scale it down 0.9, then scale Z axis by 2. This will give you an item you can use to drill the center out of the outline.
  5. Apply location, rotation, and scale with both objects now. This is necessary for the Boolean difference to work.
  6. When you add a Boolean modifier, with Difference as operator and Cube.001 as the object, you will be left with the edge.
  7. Tab into Edit mode, view the object from below, and select two faces from the bottom. Snap the cursor to them.
  8. Tab into Object mode, move Origin to 3D Cursor, then snap cursor to center and snap Object to Cursor. Now your outline is perfectly aligned on the print table, and you can add text to it.
  9. When the text is added, convert the text object into a Mesh object, then select it in Edit mode and extrude 0.4 units in the Z direction.
  10. Since the text was added at the center, it is perfectly aligned on the table. All that remains is to add another Cube to hold both the outline and the text. First, join the text and the outline by selecting both and pressing Ctrl+J.
  11. Pull the cube up so that it is about halfway out of the text, because this makes the text to be in mirror image in a moment.
  12. Join the cube to the other object. Select the top face of the cube, snap cursor to it, set Origin to 3D Cursor. Rotate on the Y axis 180 degrees.
  13. Snap cursor to Center, then snap Selected to Cursor. Now your lowest face is on the print table, and your object is ready to be exported and printed.

The image sequence here will show you the main steps. I hope you liked it, and feel free to ask if I can be of any assistance here.

Starting situation
Beveling
Adding second beveled, copied cube
Adding second beveled, copied cube
After the Boolean
After the Boolean
Finding the lowest point
Finding the lowest point
Adding the text
Adding the text
Extruding to height of outline
Extruding to height of outline
Insert base cube
Insert base cube
Pulling cube through and adjusting origin
Pulling cube through and adjusting origin

 

The final piece

 

 

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