Zebra Earring — 2-Color AMS, Print-in-One, Both Facings

A full-body zebra, flat on the back, with a ring lug fused to the crest of its mane. Two colours printed in one job on an AMS or MMU machine — no glue, no paint, no assembly beyond a jump ring.

32.1 × 30.3 × 4.3 mm. Roughly 1.67 g of PLA per earring (1.43 g body + 0.23 g ink), before purge. The back is flat, so it prints straight on the bed with no supports.

This is not a stamped flat plaque. The body is a sculpted pillow: the barrel domes, every leg carries its own rounded ridge, and the rim falls away on a 36° flank, so the animal has volume in the hand and catches light along the back.

Both facings included

Every part ships left-facing and right-facing. The right file is the left mirrored through x = 0 — body and ink through the same plane, so the stripes stay in register — and nothing about the print changes: flat back, same z on everything, no text, nothing that has to fit anything.

The lug sits on the crest either way, so the ear-hook side never changes.

How to print the colours

Import only zebra_earring_left_2c.stl (and/or the right one), right-click, Split to Parts. You should get exactly 2 parts — zebra_body and zebra_ink. Assign white to the body and black to the ink. Keep both parts in ONE object; do not use Split to Objects. Face-up as exported, flat back on the bed.

Do not print the plain zebra_earring_left.stl / _right.stl instead — those are the single-colour bodies with the pattern left as 0.8 mm engraved grooves, offered for a one-filament print or as an alternative import route alongside zebra_ink_*.stl if Split-to-Parts misbehaves.

Purge is cheaper than you think

Because it lies face-up, the two-colour band is only the top ~3.5 mm — z 0.9 to 4.4 mm, about 17 layers. Purge is charged per layer that holds both colours, so it is roughly 6 g for the whole plate, and the same 6 g whether the plate holds one earring or four, because they all share the band. Print the pair together. Stood upright, the same animal would burn about 50 g in purge.

The sibling giraffe earring uses the same 0.9–4.4 mm colour band on purpose, so zebras and giraffes share one plate and one purge.

Measured, not estimated

• 37 stripe islands, but the ink is one connected shell — otherwise Split-to-Parts would hand you 37 filament assignments. Each island is welded to its neighbours by traces buried 0.6–1.2 mm under the surface; the top 0.5 mm of the part contains 0.000 mm³ of web, so nothing shows.

• Ink inlaid 0.8 mm vertically, ≥0.65 mm normal to the flanks — three layers everywhere. Every stroke is ≥0.9 mm wide, because below one line width the slicer emits nothing at all.

• Body and ink interpenetrate (the pocket is cut 0.08 mm smaller than the ink on every face). Coincident faces fuse on import and hand you one part.

• Both _2c files verified through the same import repair the slicer runs: manifold = yes, number_of_parts = 2, on each facing.

• Minimum wall 0.8 mm, checked on the outer form; bail hole Ø2.4 mm with a 1.8 mm rim.

Print settings

0.4 mm nozzle, 0.2 mm layers, 3 walls, 100 % infill (free at this size), supports OFF, ironing OFF on the top face — ironing drags one colour across the other. Use the same PLA type in both colours.

Hardware per pair: 2 jump rings 4–5 mm through the Ø2.4 mm hole, plus 2 ear hooks. Open the jump rings sideways with pliers. The printed lug is not a snap-open fitting — always hang from a metal jump ring.

Do not scale below 100 % without re-checking the bail and the 0.9 mm stroke width. Scaling up uniformly is fine.

The photo is the actual print: four charms in white and black PLA, both facings, straight off the plate with no supports. The head is deliberately simplified — a blunt muzzle with no separate ear or eye — so it survives at 30 mm instead of turning to mush.