3D Printed Beard

You can watch our full video here: 

More thorough instructions below…

There are 4 files to download:

• A main part for the beard.
• A fastener 
• A large connector
• A small connector

The main part is designed to be quite versatile you can cut it to whatever size you want with a scissors and style it in whatever way. To do this you can use a hairdryer or heatgun and a scissors if pruning is necessary. For a long bushy beard we can't design a one-piece unless it was over 300mm in size so we thought to do it in separate parts that can be assembled - it is also a lot easier to customise this way. It should be printed in normal PLA. Other filaments might be harder to heat and soften but technically possible.

NOTE! If you are printing this with a printer that has an auxiliary side fan then turn that off as it will blow the bridging parts into the centre and they will bond together on one side.

STEPS FOR ASSEMBLY
1. For a full beard like in the video, print 4 of the main part model. 

2. Take one of the main parts, your first will be the part that goes on your chin. It consists of a main vertical wall, a smaller vertical wall and a sloped wall. The vertical wall will be the part that touches your face so keep and the hair part - it can be detached from the sloped wall by cutting with a scissors or ripping it off. You can also remove the shorter wall. If you want the chin beard part to be a certain length to fit your chin you can cut the larger vertical wall to whatever size you need.

3. The hairs that were between the larger vertical wall and the sloped wall comprise the main body of the beard and the shorter hairs between both vertical walls are the concealing hairs. These are to be bent up and smooshed a bit so they hide the larger vertical wall.

4. Get your hairdryer and heat up the hairs very gently . BE PATIENT! You don't want to melt the hairs together, you just want to soften them a bit. First step is to heat up all the hairs and then bend them in front of the vertical wall so they are bent perpendicular to it in a downwards direction. Then heat up the shorter hairs and smoosh them up and make them a bit chaotic, chaos is good here you need the shorter hairs to obscure the wall so you can't see it when it is worn.

5. Once the shorter hairs obscure the wall and the longer hairs are pointing downwards you can heat up the longer hairs and style to your desire, you really want to create a lot of chaos here and afterwards it can be styled neat or bushy. Heat and style as needed from this point on and if necessary you can cut any unwanted hairs or shape the beard ends that way.

6. The chin part is now complete, if you need to resize do it after assembling everything and trying it on once - we resized ours to 120mm long on the wall. You can focus on the cheeks now. Do the exact same thing as the chin part. The only difference is to cut the hairs diagonally so the part closest to your ear is shorter than the part closer to your chin. Do this for both cheek parts. Again the cheek parts will need resizing (unless you have a massive face).

7. After you chaosify the cheek parts you're complete, you can now work on the moustache. Again, do the exact same thing for the chin part however the moustache part is actually quite small so you need to cut it along the vertical wall to the desired degree. For our bushy dwarf beard we did in the video, the vertical wall for the moustache was only 60mm long. Style the moustache as you wish.

8. Once you have styled your beard you can connect them together. BUT it is best to place the parts over your face just to make sure they're the correct size as the next part involves superglue so it might be a bit tricky to go back a step.

Download the fastener and print it 8 times. Use PLA. You can then use superglue to glue them to the ends of each vertical wall. We designed these separately and to be glued on so that you can resize the beard by cutting the wall if you need to.

9. Print the small connector twice and the large connector twice - you can also use PLA here but it is easier to use TPU so you can bend these on to the fasteners. Use these parts to connect each fastener together. One end of the cheek part should have two connectors - one large one that connects to the moustache and one small one that connects to the chin part. Keep in mind that the connectors are the right size for a 60mm long moustache and 120mm long chin beard. If they're much bigger or smaller the connectors might need to be lengthened.

10. Get two small elastic bands and wrap them around the fasteners of the cheek part. You can then wrap the other end around each of your ears to secure the beard to your face. If you feel the beard does not fit your face well or looks lank or limp use the hairdryer again to curve it around your face or trim the hairs or resize the length of the walls.

11. As the bridging parts are probably quite shiny (as you used normal PLA and the flow rate is really low) you should paint it. We just used very quick sprays of black, brown and white spray paint to give it a very subtle aged look.

CUSTOMISATION
The design is very simple so as to be customised easily. It can be styled in many ways and if it is too small or too long and doesn't fit your face properly then the connectors or walls can be lengthened or shortened to suit. 

You can also edit the main part to make the bridging parts as long as you want. So you can have an extremely long beard if you wish. The only limitations are how big your printer is and how well it can print bridging parts. 

You could also only print and style the moustache part (or even other parts, mutton chops would be interesting) and use a skin-safe prosthetic glue to adhere it to your face.

The dwarf helmet used in the video is this one: https://www.printables.com/model/511780-dwarf-helmet