Overview
My wife loves to read. To say she's an avid reader is a huge understatement. As you can imagine, she's part of plenty of reading communities and shares in a lot of the interesting aspects of them. One of the more recent trends is to display miniature books and miniature bookshelves of titles they have read. One day she said that she'd like for me to 3D print some of these small books for her collection. So, in typical fashion, I got carried away. What she had in mind was basically a 3D printed rectangle that would fit the templates for the book covers. Had I done that, she would have been perfectly happy...but I wouldn't because I had too many ideas bouncing around in my head. This is part of the end result.
The Design
Knowing nothing about how people were making their mini books, their size, scaling, cover templates, and so on, I began some fundamental research. Initially, I found that often the books people were making were inspired by the books used in doll houses. From there, I learned, that often people were making them at a 1:12 scale. I then began trying to find some examples of measurements and the size and ratio of the book cover images they were using. This is what I landed on.
Disclaimer, I know nothing about doll houses or similar hobbies of that scale. I took the best information I had and created not just a rectangle, but a tiny book replica, or at least I tried. My goal was to create a tiny book that would work for anyone and looked like an actual book. The one thing I really wanted to include in the design, was making them look like they have pages.
The majority of the examples I found were listings on sites like Etsy and eBay of bulk quantities, very inexpensive, and made of wood. I not only 3D print but tinker with laser cutters as well. What I noticed is that the mini books they are selling are sheets of bass wood cut into bunches of small rectangles sized at or near the above-mentioned ratios. Clever idea that works perfectly for this purpose. All that to say, I could have stopped at making a rectangle and making claims about how it was "expertly scaled" or something but you can find plenty of those types of mini books quite easily. If I'm going to do it, I want to give you a different option. If you have the equipment and want to create your own books that go a little beyond small wooden blocks, I hope this provides that for you.
In this package, I include the file for the normal version of the model plus a variation that has an inner pocket sized to fit a 15mm x 2mm neodymium magnet. I created this variation to provide an option that would allow books to line up perfectly on a shelf or to create small book magnets for surfaces, like a refrigerator for example. This version requires you to create a pause during the slice with your slicer software. Once the printer finishes with the layer just before it begins to lay the first layer of the top covering, inset the pause so you can place in the magnet and then remove the print. The printer will print over top of it like it's not even there if you've learned how to insert a pause in your slicer.
Files Included in this package:
* Mini_Book.3mf
* Mini_Book.stl
* Mini_Book_Magnet_Pocket.stl
* READ_ME.txt
* License.txt
Specifications
The table below lists the intended dimensions from a complete 3D print of this item. Due to a variety of variances between 3D printer models, filament/resin, environments and more, your result may vary slightly.
| Imperial | Metric | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 1 inch | 25 mm |
| Width | 3/4-inch | 19.3 mm |
| Height | 1/4-inch | 6 mm |
Here are the settings I used when creating the model and performing its test prints:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Printer | Creality Ender 3v2 |
| Filament Type | PLA or PLA+ |
| Filament Diameter | 1.75 |
| Filament Brand(s) | eSun PLA+ |
| Nozzle Size | 0.4 |
| Print Temperature | First Layer: 220 Other Layers: 210 |
| Bed Type | Textured PEI |
| Supports | None |
| Infill | 15% |
| Slicer | Orca Slicer |
Note: I'm not recommending these settings. I'm informing you of the settings that I used in the event your results are different and help you in troubleshooting any printing issues that may arise due to any variances.
Printing Suggestions
I designed this model to be printed lying flat with my FDM printer. I'm sure it could be printed vertically, but I've not tested it in that position. If you want to use the version that has a compartment for a neodymium magnet, horizontal printing is required, and you will need to insert a pause in the slice on the layer just before the top surface is printed. I've tested printing it this way and it worked great for me.
Regarding resin prints, I'll soon be doing bulk test printing with my resin printer to see if I can reliably print something like 10 at a time. I don't see why this wouldn't work assuming you get your supports configured properly. After I've completed my testing, I'll release a STL file with supports for bulk resin printing if needed.
Warranty Disclaimer
This product is sold on an As-Is basis and provides no warranty or liability of any kind. For more information, please see our Policies & Disclaimers section of our site.
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