making 3D-printed snaps

We recently designed a snap to be used in our Kinematics clothing designs. In our jewelry designs, we’ve been using magnetic clasps that have to be inserted post printing; but we wanted our Kinematics clothing items to be fully functional straight out of the printer. So we set about designing a closure mechanism that could be 3D-printed. These snaps are designed to be printed in nylon by Selective Laser Sintering and they work!

You can download our snaps to use in your own projects from Thingiverse

And here’s what they look like on the bodice. This is actually the interior of the bodice.

On the exterior surface, the buttons just appear as solid panels.