January 24, 2025
Description
A rustic horseshoe as a decoration. As an extra, nails can be added and a the horseshoe can be put on a stand and even a trophy can be made by attaching a heart in the horseshoe.
There are two stands: a normal stand and a low profile stand.
The horseshoe can be printed without support. The oversized horseshoe can be printed with support for the slot in the bottom, but I could not see a big difference.
When the horseshoe with a stand is printed, then the lip of the horseshoe (the lip that connects to the stand) needs support.
The nails should be printed horizontally with a raft and support under it. I suggest to use a stronger material for the nails, such as PLA+. They can be bended with heat. I put them in hot water and waited until they got floppy.
The stl files can be scaled in the slicer. The horseshoe with a lip for the stand has enough tolerance to make it fit at 75% size or even smaller.
I printed the horseshoes in PLA. First, I used spray paint with primer. Then a spray paint for a texture.
Spray paints for a textured rough surface are for example:
The "Rust" paint effect was created with black paint and two colors brown and orange. I used a coarse open sponge to apply it.
The final layer is matt varnish. The varnish made it darker. I could have used brighter colors, for example yellow.
The heart of the trophy in the photo is filled with resin and has iridescent flakes. The ropes were fixed in the heart with UV epoxy resin. I used a UV flashlight to immediately harden the resin that fixed the ropes.
OpenSCAD is free software: https://openscad.org/
The script needs at least a 2024 version of OpenSCAD. It will not work with the 2021 version of OpenSCAD.
To use the script, put both "Horseshoe.scad" and "spline.scad" in a folder. Open the file "Horseshoe.scad".
Used library
The script uses the library tjw-scad from Github user teejaydub: https://github.com/teejaydub/tjw-scad
License: CC0 1.0 Universal.
I only use the file "spline.scad", and that file is included.
Both the script and the resulting stl files have the license CC0 (Public Domain).
You may sell the horseshoes that you print.
License:
Creative Commons — Public Domain
Stone Age Sculptor
