100% Custom Ear Plugs Using 3D Printing & 3D Scanning!

In this video, I'm going to show you how I used 3D Printing and 3D Scanning to make my very own, CUSTOM-made ear plugs... and how you can do it, too!

I don't know about all of you, but my ears are really important to me, and not just because I work in content creation. I've had a couple of pretty serious ear trauma incidents where friends have peer-pressured me to take out my ear protection at concerts, and to this day, I live with the consequences. My ears consistently ring, I’m currently undergoing tests to diagnose a strange and elusive problem where my brain can no longer differentiate speech when there's background noise.

In this video, I'm going to show you how I combined 3D printing, 3D scanning, and silicone molding to create these fully custom, safe-in-your-body earplugs, and how you can make as many pairs as you want for pennies a set.

🎥 IN THIS VIDEO: 🎥
00:00 Introduction
02:07 Why 3D Print Custom Ear Plugs?
04:18 Choosing The Right Materials
05:19 Creating Your Ear Impression
06:43 3D Scanning
09:04 3D Modeling & Design Considerations
11:02 3D Printing
11:43 Casting
14:10 End Product

🔗 LINKS MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO: 🔗
👉 Buy Your Own DIY Ear Impression Kit:
👉 Download Polycam

🛒 RECOMMENDED GEAR: 🛒

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#3dprinting #3dprinted #3dprinter

[thenextlayer]

So, what do you think? Will you try this out yourself? I'd love to hear in the comments below!

[OnceinaSixSide]

I love finding practical uses for 3D printing like this. The problem solving can be a lot of work up front, but once everything is figured out you can just print the thing again and again and again

[CrustyBoot]

Not sure if we are interested in 3d scanning? Of course we are!

[anabanana]

Audiologist here — DO NOT TAKE IMPRESSIONS OF YOUR EAR CANALS YOURSELF!! This is extremely You could literally rip your eardrums and middle ear bones out of ear canals, and permanently damage your hearing organs. Seriously, I’ve seen patients need multiple surgeries from doing things like this. Do not take this risk. Go see a professional and have them take impressions for you. Jfc

[offspec]

It would have been neat to see you do the first two steps at home as well to see the difference between your full DIY plugs & the ones from the models you got professionally done.

[AxlZhor]

What a great video! Of course I believe we all want to know more about 3D scan and not just the one from creality, with Polycam and LiDAR it’s could be fun

[JoseLuisGutierrezHerrera]

I would also love a video on the creality scanner. I own the same one but I haven't used it at all, so any project ideas are super welcomed.

[stefanralfes]

Wow i would love to see an episone about your 3D scanner!
BTW awesome project.

[Giggles]

I'm so happy to hear blender can be used for 3d printing! Many years ago I used blender for graphics in games, so have a little back ground in using it. Hopefully will be easier to move into designing for 3d print. Thank you for information

[UnoriginalElephant]

I would LOVE to hear about your 3d scanner! As a research assistant in college I had access to a 3d scanner and some nice 3d printers, so naturally I did a 3d scan of my bust and turned it into a Lego head 😊

[davecoggan]

Thanks for the idea as I work night shifts. I've found some skin safe silicone and casted my own. Using the revopoint pop 2 to 3d scan some mouldable silicone off Amazon. Its a consumable though and I'm not keen on spending money all the time on it lol. One time use stuff pretty much

One day I'll get the proper stuff for moulding my ear and 3d scan again. Cheers!

[renatomusicnunes]

Hey thank you very much for the vídeo, very interesting. I use that soft gel that is sold at Walgreens farmacy. But Iam from Brazil and here they sell one similar but is terrible quality it's Hard a d don't fit. My question is
Do you thing if I buy that silicone from Aliexpress I can make my onw gel soft and stick like the one that is sold at walgreens?

[oddduck]

I have the same ear issue, cannot discern speech around other noise. Were doctors able to diagnose what it is?

[mistaBorg]

actually i would like to know what coating can be used on smooth iems to make them less slippery but also not too sticky so dust wont accumulate ontop

[TecSanento]

Could you please tell me more about this imability to differentiate speech from background noise - because I have this from Time to time :O and did not I know that it is a diagnosable thing

[danallen]

I wonder how difficult it would be to use this for replacing the silicone on earbuds?

[crazyblazeX]

Thanks for the video, I'll try to make my own too! But I think maybe it is not worth it to 3d scan and print the mold. I think I can just skip those steps and use the ear impression to create the mold right away

[nicolasetheve]

Thank you for this really good work :)
Just a little tip in Blender for adjusting the fit : You can add a specified tolerance to the boolean substraction, for this you just need to add a Solidify modifier on the cutter object and selecting the option "Only rim", weirdly enough, if your mesh is manifold it will create an envellope outside it and and you will be able to specify your amount of tolerance ! You might want to select the option "Even thickness" too.
This is better than just scaling your object because you're not really changing it's shape (global features will stay at the same place in space, you're just making the object thicker) but maybe this is the way you did it !

Thank's again and I hope to see more videos, you got a new subscriber ;)

[dylankirkby]

How did you convince ultimate ears to give you your STLs? I asked them this back in 2019 and they wouldn’t do it ☹️

[mikkelrasmussen]

I will definitely be doing this in the future since I suffer from hearing loss, having a good pair of ear plugs has been a challenge to find for a good price.