Easily create personalised ice cubes

• No CAD skills required
• Simple print. No supports.
• Also useful as molds for kinetic sand or play-doh

Included examples (.stl):

• ICE
• GIN
• RUM

IMPORTANT: Ice molds require flexible filament

• The safety of 3d printed materials for food preparation is highly debated
• I personally use filament that is certified as food-safe (Eolas Prints TPU, Spain)
• I also use a non-toxic hardened steel nozzle, rather than a standard brass nozzle

If you've never printed with flexible filaments before:

• it's definitely worth a try!
• start with a semi-flexible filament (e.g. 95A TPU)
• start with this design (Seriously. It's dead easy.)

To release the ice, run hot water on the back of the mold, and then extract with a blunt knife. The more flexible the filament, the easier the extraction.

How to customise:

• Install the free software OpenSCAD
• Do a 30 min online tutorial to learn the basics (use the editor, preview, render, and save as .stl)
• Download the sledge typeface
• Install the typeface so it's accessible to OpenSCAD (see forum)
• Move gin_ice_mold_demo.scad and icemold.scad to the same directory and open gin_ice_mold_demo.scad in OpenSCAD.
• Modify the text. Modify `mold_length_x` to change the length of the ice cube.
• preview (F5), render (F6), and save as .stl

Note: if you don't want any wall text, just change the variables to empty strings (e.g. `wall_text_lhs_top = "";`).

Further info:

Many thanks to the support of my work colleagues at Munich-based TNG Technology Consulting GmbH. The initial concept came from a hobby project during a TNG Techday (similar to Google's "20% time").

The design is also on GitHub. The OpenSCAD code is released under a permissive licence that allows commercial use.