It's a sunny day and the kids are having a picnic. Suddenly little Sam drops his biscuit on the ground and it starts rolling away from him. A nearby bird dives down and snatches the biscuit in its beak!
The small stories in the beginning of my blog posts is my way of setting a mood to a design, since it's quite hard to send moods across to a reader in a design description. This particular story happens to be inspired by a real event, which took place when we sat outside a nearby theme park, after spending a very long day there.
The kids were tired and we ate what was left of our picnic food before going home. My oldest son dropped his biscuit in a slope and it rolled away at least 10 meters! Before it stopped a seagull dived down and snatched it! My son had a startled look on his face, not believing what had just happened, and then started crying when he realized his biscuit was gone. Unfortunately it was our last biscuit! After a while he saw the fun in the situation and we could finally go home.
The biscuit in this design reminds me of that day … sun, outdoors, fun and a snatched away biscuit.
A bun seemed like a simple enough thing to make in Meshmixer and it was pretty easy to draw and fun to paint. The buns look quite tiny but tasty when done. They are painted in a light brown color first, with some darker brown additions along the top of the bun spiral shape. With the tip of a tiny brush some white "sugar" dots can be placed on top. The white sugar dots also ensures that kids don't mistake the buns for something else that is brown and similar shaped…
Strengthen by the acceptable result of the bun, a meringue, needed for the cake, was the next step. I can conclude that free form modelling takes a lot of practice or skill, of which I have neither. It's so much easier to calculate designs in a "CAD" program compared to forming something on your own. It took several failed tries to create something which at least kids recognize as a meringue.
Also the rose, leaves, princess cake, strawberries, caramel biscuit and the chocolate topping on the cake are made in Meshmixer. Since I lack Meshmixer skills I usually first create a shape that is as close as possible to what I'm aiming for. For the strawberry it only took some smooth and draw commands to get the right shape.
Below is another example of simplified freeform design where cake topping is easily created from a hollowed out cylinder shape. Some mixed draw, smooth and inverted draw commands and the "cylinder lid shape" turns into a delicious chocolate topping.
End result:
Printed version of Cakes & Biscuits:
Files for download
All files are available at Thingiverse and Prusa Community
Cakes and Biscuits at Thingiverse
Cakes and Biscuits at Prusa Community
You can also find files for a Teacart for download in The Teacart blog post.
