BEWARE: These 3D Printed Minions Will Take Your Money!

One thing that we have been seeing more and more of lately, within the desktop 3D printing space, is people coming up with ways to use 3D printers in order to help them reuse products that they typically would throw in the trash can. For one man, named Cemal Cetinkaya, this has become quite common with his 3D printable designs.

Known for this 3D printed Nutella wine glass and ‘Nasty Pig’ tip jar, Cetinkaya has a tendancy to create 3D printable designs which help him reuse old glass jars.

“As a product designer, one of my responsibilities is to design environmental[ly]-friendly products,” Cetinkaya tells 3DPrint.com. “So, I thought that 3d printing technology was a great way to show people an upcycling project. The main idea is to transform a simple jar to an elegant product. I think rather than throwing the empty jars away, this is a good way to reuse [them], made possible by 3D printing.”

Around the world, there are hundreds of thousands of fans of Minions. You know, those cute, tiny yellow creatures from Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, and the upcoming Minions film. Cetinkaya saw this as a perfect way to create a bank/tip jar that would appease many of these fans. In essence, these Minions (this particular design is Minion Dave) will take your money from you–but don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

Cetinkaya designed his Minion money box by modeling them first in Rhino 3D.

“The cylinder shape of the minion body is perfect for a jar,” he tells us. “So, I did research on Minions as well as some sketching. I measured a jar which would be used for the body part of the Minion, using calibre. Then I carefully modelled the head and bottom part of the Minion according to the dimensions obtained for the body part. I designed them in a way that the jar can easily snap into the minion parts. No need to twist.”

Cetinkaya designed the 3D printed parts to fit on a 93mm diameter jar, but the size can easily be scaled up or down during the slicing process, so that it can fit virtually any jar you wish. In fact, you can download the design files for this nifty little bank now for free at MyMiniFactory.

It will take you approximately 20 hours of print time, but it will be well worth it. Only minimal support is needed ,which takes just 2 minutes to remove once printed. Cetinkaya printed this on his MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer, but any FFF-based 3D printer should get the job done.

What do you think about these Minion banks? Have you downloaded and printed one yet yourself? Discuss in the 3D Printed Minion Bank forum thread on 3DPB.com.