Amazing 3D printed hand for product display

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Having a fitting mannequin can do wonders to a product presentation. When unveiled our active heating glove we came across the trouble of having to find a suitable hand mannequin that fit well with the glove but also looked cool in turn brings out the character of our Magma glove.

Our search for a suitable mannequin didn’t turn up any good product I started working on a solution. There were three problems to be solved.

Nice looking – face it, face it a bad looking mannequin can make a nice looking product less appealing so I didn’t want that to happen
The glove has to fit well – to ensure that design features are not distorted and the product can be presented as if a person is wearing the glove
Easy to wear – If the glove cannot be worn easily its no fun trying to do the deco, additionally in the past we had issues where we damaged the gloves when fitting

I started working on the base design for the mannequin and made several attempts to get the right proportion to ensure that shape wouldn’t look unrealistic. Final design made it possible for me to scale my design to different glove sizes however, I went with size L because it looked good once the glove was worn on it.

Next challenge was to make the mannequin easier to assemble and that a glove can be put on very easily. For design was broken into three parts. Top hand part bottom hand part and a removable thumb. This made it easy to put on the glove and attach the thumb separately.

Finally to get the right effect I looked into different material that would make a sturdy 3D print while making the print look ownsome. I chose a translucent PLA+ made by esun which had good hardness properties.

Final product was a very stunning looking mannequin hand that fit perfectly into the glove. It was easy to disassemble and carry which was an added bonus since we have to travel all the way from Sri Lanka.