3D Printed Pie Divider!

Growing up in a family of 10 there was a sigh of relief among us older few when child number 8 was born, "finally", we sighed, "we no longer have to divide things into 7 anymore", which made all adults within earshot laugh.

But there is still the problem of having pies, cakes and other goodies divided evenly among those present, whether there be 13 or 3 hungry humans waiting for their fair share food. So, taking matters into my own hands I spent 10 minutes designing a 3D printed guide so you can be completely unbiased and give everyone an equal slice of the pie! (or cake :)

3D printer

Filament (recommend PETG)

A pie or cake!

To design this model I used Autodesk's Fusion 360, arguably the best free (for hobbyists and small startups) CAD software available, it's easy to use, versatile and VERY powerful, and it even runs on my laptop, a Dell Latitude E5500 with a 2 core, 2.54GHz processor, 2GB of ram, an SSD and NO dedicated graphics memory!

To make this model I drew a circle for the handle and extruded it to the height I wanted, next I drew a slightly larger circle on top for a knob and extruded it downwards, joining it to the main part of the handle.

Then I put a 0.5mm chamfer on the bottom of the handle to compensate for the "elephants foot" squish that all FDM 3D prints have, after that I filleted all edges on the knob.

For the arms I made a new sketch on the same plane as the first sketch, drawing a line from the centre out as far as needed, drew an arc out from the centre line and back to the start (if you are getting a bit confused look at the pictures), I then extruded them as high as I thought necessary and chamfered the bottom 0.5mm, and filleted the top.

Remember when extruding the arms to make sure it is making a new body and not joining the new extrusion to the handle as by default.

To finish off I then used the circular pattern tool to duplicate the arm all the way around the handle, combined the all the body's into one using the combine tool, exported it as an .stl file and opened my slicer ready to print!

For the .stl models from thirds all the way to thirteenths you can go to my Thingiverse.

If you plan on keeping this for more than a few days, I highly recommend that you coat your guides in a food-safe epoxy resin, this is because FDM 3D prints have a lot of nooks and crannies for bacteria to get stuck in and fester away, potentially making you very sick.

Coating in epoxy means there are a lot fewer places for germs to hide, meaning cleaning is easier, also it gives your prints better heat resistance, allowing you to wash your guides in hot water and kill any nasty germs.

And remember: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

Now you can divide with confidence knowing that everybody has an equal portion, as long as you place it in the exact centre...