Minecraft Party Crafts: 3D printer edition

Apparently kids still love minecraft at 8, so once again we did a minecraft party. I had used up ALL my ideas at the last party, and had to come up with new activities, which was stressful. New 3D printer to the rescue! It was a chaotic success! 

Here were two of the most successful activites and the favors which were all enjoyed. I interspersed these crafts with more active activities (scavenger hunts, balloon darts, pinyata, cardboard box maze, etc) to get the 8-year-old energy out. 

1. Make-your-own minecraft sword

I had this idea of snapping minecraft pieces into a grid and couldn't find what I wanted. Then I discovered opengrid! I used the OpenGrid parametric generator to get the right shape, adjusted the size, and modified the snapping pieces to make flat tiles. 

To make this a useable sword, I cut three layers of 5 mm thick EVA foam for each sword and added a thin 1/2 inch wide half round wooden dowel - Amazon link here - in the middle layer. So the dowel was enbedded in a dowel-sized hole in the middle layer and sandwiched between two outer layers. I extended the foam past the grid around the blade part to allow for some extra padding in case the kids accidently hit someone. Then, the foam and dowel were all gorilla glued together, and the foam was taped until it was completely covered in black tape. I glued the grid in place on both sides. For extra stability, I used an upolstery needle and thread to sew the grid and foam together at key places on the sword. The knots were all hidden in the foam and the thread was thick but didn't interfere with the snapping of the tiles. 

All that was left was printing 1000s of tiles. It took forever. Each tile takes about 3+ minutes to print and each sword needed 84 tiles on each side so I needed a lot to allow for color choice! I used bambu lab's color mixing feature to get extra colors and shades and used a holographic build plates on some of the tiles. Glow-in-the-dark filament would have been cool too. Black, gold, and silver were very popular. 

They turned out amazing! The snap of the tiles into the sword was so satisfying (even for me), and all the kids went home with an awesome full-sized personalized sword!

Cutting out the foam and placing the dowel (the blades I cut to size later once it was all glued together)

Foam next to the grid (I later taped the whole sword because the tape peeled off otherwise)

Sword with tiles

2. Minecraft potions: 

I altered this awesome model,  https://makerworld.com/en/models/1360280-hidden-mana-potion?from=search#profileId-1404782

by making the top area thinner so it would be more translucent, and made the 'cork' part removable. It was printed in clear PETG. The overhang on the rim of the bottle didn't print crisply but I didn't have time to troubleshoot it, and it didn't mess up the effect. The kids chose different colored cellophane to put in them so that the whole bottle glowed in different colors They spent a fair amount of time switching the cellophane out and trying different ways of stuffing it in there to get various effects. Turned out pretty cool. 

Here are the little lights I used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XC9J2L3?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_6&th=1

 

3. Chest and hearts

One of the activities involved finding a chest, so I printed these minecraft chests which turned out great. I only modified the latch slightly to allow it to open more smoothly. 

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1365840-modular-minecraft-chest-no-ams-needed?from=search#profileId-1411495

And, everyone went home with a life heart clicky - because why not? 

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1009193-minecraft-heart-key-clicker-keychain?from=search#profileId-988391

Overall, the party was a success! And I got to learn how to modify files and do a little 3D design. Win-win!