Sand Castle Mold

thingiverse

This is a custom sand castle mold I designed for rapid sand castle creation at the beach. The design features the mold itself alongside a 36mm ball for scale reference. To add an entertaining twist, I'm planning a game where participants build a castle, balance plastic water bottle caps on its towers and then take turns tossing foosballs at other castles to knock them down and earn points. I recently discovered a 20-pack of 36mm foosballs online for just $13. After slicing the model using my Ultimaker at 77.5% scale (resulting in a 6-inch print size), I successfully printed this design in PLA on my Creality Ender3-X. The mold itself was printed upside down with its open side facing upwards, utilizing a brim and 35% infill with supports. A fair warning: even at 77.5% scale, this lengthy print required an astonishing 601g of filament and consumed a substantial 1 day and 13 hours. My daughter discovered that filling the mold roughly three-quarters full with sand, carefully inverting it onto a small mound of sand, pressing down gently and then shaking to pack the sand tightly, followed by delicately lifting the mold off, yielded well-crafted complete sand castles.