By Tony Riggs, Senior Applications Engineer, GoEngineer

In the past, I’ve designed molds to create fun things for my kids.

For Easter, I figured why not try a chocolate one?

Walking through the grocery store gave me several ideas for an Easter-themed mold. The ideas were almost endless—a bunny bonanza!—but my kid favorites ended up being bunny-shaped cake pans, treat molds, and cookie cutters.

I bought a few boxes of cake and brownie mix as well as some Baker’s Chocolate. In the past, I’ve made chocolate-covered strawberries so the melting part would be fairly easy (with the help of my wife that is).

It’s the next step that can be difficult.

Have you ever tried to model a cute, cuddly bunny rabbit in 3D CAD such as SOLIDWORKS? A simple 2D extruded shape wouldn’t be that bad, but I was nervous about the 3D bunny.

Before starting the model, I browsed the internet for design inspiration. Why re-invent the wheel? I looked thru GrabCad, 3D ContentCentral, and Thingiverse and found plenty of examples to get started.

I picked a handful of examples that I wanted to try.

For the chocolate egg, I started simple with a two-piece mold and added a place to fill the mold with chocolate as well as a place on each side to insert a screwdriver to get the halves apart.

Locating pins also helped take some of the guesswork out. I figured a few well-placed rubber bands could hold the two halves together while the chocolate hardened.

Just for fun, I tried some fancier egg designs, mimicking what I had seen in the store.

If you are new to 3D printing and 3D CAD, this can be a great project to test out your skill and practice using the tools. In the process, you will learn a ton and have some fun along the way. Plus your kids will love the results.

Happy Easter!