Recreating a glass sculpture with Clear v02!

When I was really little my grandmother had this glass siamese cat sculpture as a coffee table decoration and it was my favorite thing ever. I couldn’t play with it, but it was just really pretty and I loved it. When I was seven or eight, she gifted it to me and I’ve held onto it ever since, through four international moves and countless other travels.

Since the Clear resin we have has always reminded me of glass, I decided to scan the cat and try to print out a replica! It took some finagling to scan (expecting a laser scanner to behave nicely when bouncing off glass might not have been the smartest move), but some wrangling and touch-up sculpting later, it worked out beautifully!

The original glass and a small scale test at 100 microns.

I wanted to print it solid, but since the original piece is about 5” across, doing it full scale would be tricky. After a half-scale print turned out so nicely, I tried again at 75% and 50 microns.

Again, it came out great! I oriented it as close to the hinge as I could since it’s such a large, dense part.

I ended up mailing the 50 micron version to my grandmother for Mother’s Day and it was a smash hit! :slight_smile:

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Very nice work. I love the opaque tint of the print. However, if you want to make it fully transparent instantly, use clear nail polish (sprayed with airbrush to ensure that you don’t get brush marks).

Here’s an example of a supports-base only treated with clear nail polish. Don’t mind the bulges; that’s because it was quickly painted with nail polish to see the effect.

Another nail polish trick for scanning is to paint the model with black nail polish before scanning it. And removing it easily with acetone. It’s a trick commonly used in the gold/silver plating industry to stop certain parts getting plated.

Still, the result of your cat looks wonderful!!

Thanks! :smiley:

That’s a great tip. I’ll have to try it out! I have a few other projects in the works this would be really useful for, too!

Do you just use acetone to clear out the airbrush afterwards?

Correct, @Roxanne, I only use acetone to clean the airbrush. Though I must mention that I use enamel reducer with the nail polish (50/50). That’s pretty much it.

Unfortunately I cannot show you any results as I’ve only used this technique with gold/silverplating. But it should work with 3D printing as well