Recently, I designed and printed a few tap handles for friends who are passionate about home brewing and wanted some special handles for serving their beers at their wedding. 3D Printing allows a way to achieve personal, intricate designs at a material cost low enough to justify a custom handle for every brew.
“Red’s Raspberry”
A handle for a Raspberry Wheat Beer brewed by J & R Mather. Modeled in Fusion 360, Printed in Hatchbox Warm White PLA.
Since they were one use only handles, I printed them in a white PLA from Hatchbox. I have good success with the Hatchbox plastics, and picked white because I knew I would be painting these to get the color I want, since I didn’t have on hand the colors requested by the couple.
“Riverbank Cider”
A handle for an Apple Cider, also brewed by J & R Mather. Modeled and Sculpted in Blender, Printed in Hatchbox Warm White PLA.
An apple shaped handle was requested for a cider, which was modeled in Blender.
“Italian Battalion IPA”
An alternate or backup tap handle for an IPA, also brewed by J & R Mather. Modeled in Fusion 360, Printed in Hatchbox Warm White PLA.
The apple and the Italy handles were painted with hobby paint pens, while the R was painted with Rust-o-leum spray paint. Close up on the Italy handle, it can be seen where a little bit of the paint bled along the ridges of the top layer. The paint soaks in the porous surface, and would benefit from a primer layer which wasn’t used on these.
All the handles had a tapered hex recess in the bottom to accept a 3/8-16 UNC threaded coupler, which I tapped in with a light hammer and secured with a bit of CA glue.