Jungle-Themed kids clock

Recently, I needed a new clock for the house and decided to challenge myself to create it with my 3d printer. I do not have multi-color printing capabilities on my 3d printer, hence I needed to get creative to make it work. Printing the dial and numbers separately and with tight offsets allowed for a good look with sufficient contrast.

I wanted this clock to work well for smaller children who are just learning how to read time. Hence, adding both the hour and minute numbers around the dial allows for an easier read of the exact time.

Materials and tools

• Printer: standard FDM printer
• Filament: 1.75mm PLA
• Nozzle: 0.4mm
• Clock mechanism (mine is 56 x 37 x 56 mm)
• Black and gray spray paint (compatible with plastic)

The Design Process

The main challenge for this project was printing without the benefit of multi-color capabilities. To achieve a colorful result, I designed the dial and numbers separately so that they could be printed in different colors and then interlocked. The precision of the print allowed for a perfect fit, with the numbers locking snugly into place on the dial.

My clock mechanism has no suspension mechanism included, so the clock mount needed to cater to that. Due to that, that part does need to be printed with supports enabled.

It took a few attempts to get all the parts to fit snugly together, but once they did, it was such a satisfying mount!

Assembly & Final Touches

After printing all the parts, I spray-painted the mount as well as the number dials to get a nice finish.

Before moving on to the fun part (assembly), the cutouts of some numbers needs to be glued to the number dials. (The circles in the 0, 6, 8, 9 as well as the triangles in the 4’s) This is a bit finicky, but with some tweezers to the rescue, it ended up being quick. Note that since the parts fit well together and there is not a lot of movement on the clock, it is not a huge problem if the glue is not holding on that strong.

Now comes the best part: assembling all the pieces! It’s pretty straightforward and self-explanatory, a video will follow a bit later.

Final results

I am very happy with the results, this custom clock fits well with the wallpaper and is easy to read the time on!

Of course, this would have been a lot easier with a printer capable of multi-color prints (likely it could have been printed as a single piece), but, as you can see, it’s possible to get good results without one.

Bonus: remix

As you can imagine, it is now quite easy to change the dial design to get a different clock. Since I was on a roll, I decided to make a second one, this time with some clouds. Thanks to some roughly applied spray paint, it has a nice misty effect giving it a different look than the jungle clock.

Both models can be found on printables.