this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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I did a diy cast of my ear canal using diy silicone... Which I fo not recommend, but look for sugru. It's silicone type I mixed with talcum powder to expose the water trapped in talcum to the silicone over a large volume in a controlled way... Then I scanned the casts and I used a DSLR to take photos of the parts at various angles and used an open source app to get 3D models from the images. Then I used freecad to cut the models with areas to mount the tiny speakers and such. Finally printed them in SLA resin. I made earplugs, IEMS and headphone adapters using the same geometry. They are very comfortable. The plugs are great for swimming.
They sell kits to make your own custom-fit silicone plugs. They're like $10 on Amazon.
Work great. Push the goo into your ear, wait a few minutes and it's cured enough to take out. Wait another hour or so and it's fully cured.
Yup, I learned about it later. Its called radians. There are other companies. I did try the material and works okay. The key design factor is that it won't stick to your skin or eardrums. Well there are kits that are like that, do you gotta test the material before you go stick it up your ear holes. Even I wasn't that dumb. I practiced several times before committing LOL. You would not LOL not hearing anything anymore, so again, just go to the audiologist. It defeats the purpose if you hurt your hearing while trying to hear better.
For those who don't want to go through this, you can get an audiologist to make the molds and there are companies that will do the rest for you.
It's pricey, though. For me it was $200 for the molds and $200 for the plugs, but the $200 for the plugs includes a one time charge for processing the molds, so subsequent orders are much cheaper.
They were worth every penny for the music festival I had them made for. They offered great noise reduction while not impacting the audio clarity, and I could wear them for 12+ hours with absolutely no discomfort.
I totally second that. You don't want silicone not curing over your eardrum and then having a nurse pull it off carefully. Sometimes I do stupid things. But don't do what I did. Once you got your molds you are golden. Meshlab.net, and blender.org for mesh manipulation and modeling. Alicevision.org for meshroom, the 3D reconstruction from photos software "photogrammetry". Finally freecad.org for the cad software. You can just buy IEMs by sending them the model from meshroom or the actual silicon impressions. Those can be pricey. My goal was to just print various versions as I needed. So I got a low profile for swimming, I got one that you just insert a plastic headphone into. I got one with armatures and a set without anything just for ear protection. I SLA print these and then polish them before use. Super comfortable and if you're not a demanding audiophile, these are like all your music was a musical monalisa.
Yeah, I think what you did was a pretty cool project. I appreciate you acknowledging the risks associated with it.
I just love recommending custom molded ear plugs any chance I get. They let me stand in front of the speaker stack at a Tech9 set with absolutely no discomfort from the volume. I actually had to take them out to make sure the volume wasn't just low and the difference was staggering. Immediately my ears started hurting, so I quickly put them back in.