Apr. 5, 2015 | By Simon
The Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites’ freedom from Egypt known as Passover began in the evening of Friday, April 3 around the world and will last for a total of eight days.
Among other traditions that are celebrated during the Jewish holiday is a meal centered around six items - “the tools to God” - that are served on a Seder plate. Though they are eaten during the Seder ceremony, they’re particularly used for their symbolism in the Jewish religion.
Of course, with the ever-expanding popularity of 3D printing worldwide, there are sure to be some 3D printed elements popping up during at least a few of these Passover celebrations around the world over the next week.
Among others, engineering manager Steve Medwin - who considers himself a “serial hobbyist” by night - created a vertical Seder plate design that strays from the traditional flat Seder plate in favor of a modern take on the concept. While the plates themselves - which feature Passover-related symbols etched onto them - can be as fancy as desired, they come in all shapes and sizes including paper plates with hand drawn Passover symbols.
Medwin, who considers 3D printing to be a “satisfying convergence of my art, engineering and photography skills” is married to a rabbi and has two children and four grandchildren to celebrate the occasion with.
“Last year with Passover approaching, my wife, who happens to be a rabbi, challenged me to create a vertical seder plate,” said Medwin in an interview with 3Ders.
“The traditional ones are essentially large, flat plates so this seemed like an interesting challenge.”
To create the vertically-designed plate, Medwin used OpenSCAD to develop a modular design that would be able to be printed in pieces using his own MakerBot Replicator 2. Previously, Medwin had been doing a lot of 3D modeling in ZBrush however the program didn’t give him the control that he needed to create the necessary 3D solids. According to Medwin, OpenSCAD ended up being the perfect tool for creating the multiple iterations he needed to create during the design process.
In total, the final design ended up being a total of seven different parts that slide together to create a vertical post with arms that hold the glass seder plate liners. Due to the precise modeling capabilities of OpenSCAD, Medwin was able to to control the tolerances on the slip fit so that the entire object would be solid and stable.
Once he had finished the design, he used white PLA filament to print out all of the assembly parts on his MakerBot Replicator 2. Not including the iterative prototyping prints, the final design took 19 hours to print a total of seven parts that used 230 grams of PLA filament.
Never one to shy away from celebrating the efforts done by those in the 3D printing community, 3D printer manufacturer (and parent company of MakerBot) Stratasys liked Medwin’s vertical seder plate so much - they even used an image of it on their own Passover holiday cards.
“Stratasys contacted me this week and told me they selected my Vertical Seder Plate for their Passover e-card this week. I sent them photos and they designed a gorgeous card.”
The final cards - as well as a downloadable seder plate of your own - are available in both English and Hebrew over on Thingiverse.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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We are interested in purchasing a 3D printed Seder Plate do you sell them
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