Liven Up Your Shower with 3D Printed Zooheads

A shower head is a shower head – or is it? There are many different types of shower heads, with varying water pressures, angles, and designs, from plain to fancy. It’s not an item most people would ever have thought about personalizing, but Jonathan Schwartz isn’t most people – he’s the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Voodoo Manufacturing, 3D printing service bureau and futuristic factory. It’s no surprise that someone running a 3D printing service bureau, especially one as inventive as Voodoo Manufacturing, would be inclined to creativity and customization, and in 2014, about a year before he started Voodoo, Schwartz was responsible for a viral design on Thingiverse.

The design was a 3D printable T-Rex skull that fit over a shower head, so that water sprayed from its mouth when the shower was turned on. People loved it, and to this day it’s been downloaded over 41,000 times. The popularity isn’t surprising – people love dinosaurs, and it’s way more fun to have a T-Rex roaring water at you than to stand under a plain old shower head.

Recently, Schwartz and Voodoo Manufacturing decided to take that popularity and expand on it, creating Zooheads, a line of shower heads in a wide variety of animals.

“The idea originated when I created a now famous t-rex skull shower head,” said Schwartz. “In 2014, I designed this shower head and posted it to the Thingiverse, the popular 3D printing file sharing site. Quickly after posting the design it went viral, so we thought, why not make this a business? We’re super stoked to make cool shower heads and look forward to creating new lines around pop-culture!”

In addition to the T-Rex skull, there’s a regular T-Rex head. There’s also a dragon head and dragon skull that breathe hot water and steam onto you, so that you can say “Dracarys!” every time you turn on the shower and pretend that you’re getting Unburnt. Nothing like a hot shower to help you start the day like a Targaryen. There are several other fearsome beasts, including a shark, gorilla, alligator, lion and eagle. If you’re looking for something a bit friendlier, there’s also a dolphin that playfully sprays you. The coolest one, I think, is the elephant, which rains water down on you in two streams, from both its mouth and trunk.

Each shower head is available in multiple colors, including white, black, gray, silver, light blue, blue, navy blue, pink, red, orange, neon orange, light orange, hazel, gold, lime green, green, neon green and glow in the dark. (How cool would a glow in the dark shower head beast be?) Every design is 3D printed in PLA and has simple twist-on installation onto any standard US 1/2″ pipe or shower fixture.

Zooheads is 3D printing its shower heads on demand, keeping no inventory. Each one is $29.95 with free shipping, and takes, on average, eight hours to print and two days to ship.

The brand will be adding additional shower head designs once it launches, and it won’t likely run out of options anytime soon, judging from how large the animal kingdom is. A spitting snake? An angry cat? An adorable axolotl? The possibilities are endless.

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