Hybrid Voronoi Christmas tree decoration

This is a small Christmas tree decoration shaped like a tree that could be stood up on it's own or hung on a tree by a string. Originally, this tree was designed to sell at my daughter's school Christmas market to raise funds for her class.

You can print it in whatever colour and material you like, but I chose clear ABS for the star, green ABS for the foliage and red ABS for the base.

To complete the model as I have you will also need some 3mm carbon fibre rod which is easy to come by via eBay. The lengths of rod that I found worked best were 15mm and 30mm. I've designed a special jig to help with the cutting that can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2680643

I've included STLs for the shafts, but I can pretty much guarantee they'll snap during assembly.

The tree should assemble without glue and it gives a nice tight fit. I reckon it might be a good idea to add a blob of glue if hanging it on a tree to keep it all together.

You can scale the STLs up by 133% to give a bigger model that uses 4mm rod. This gives a much more robust tree but nearly triples the print time. The cutting jig for 4mm rod is here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2682013

Some barbeque skewer sticks are 3mm in diameter, these might work for the shafts if cut to the right length.

I'd really appreciate to see any makes on this page.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Print instructions

Unassociated tags: xmas tree decoration

Category: Decor Print Settings

Printer Brand: Prusa

Printer: Prusa Mk2

Rafts: No

Supports: No

Resolution: 0.2

Infill: 10% where applicable

Notes:

Don't print the full tree unless you have a sintering machine. I've only included ths STL to show what the model looks like.

Post-Printing

Shafts inserted into the tree foliage

Be very careful when inserting the rods and make sure the tree top or bottom are on a table as it's very brittle indeed.

How I Designed This

Designed with FreeCAD 0.16, Voronator.com and Blender

The outline shape of the tree foliage was designed in FreeCAD 0.16, which was then exported as an STL to voronator.com which processed the shape into the Voronated wire-mesh shape.

I then designed the central shaft to give the model vertical strength and merged it with the Voronated foliage in Blender.

I then designed the base and the star in FreeCAD.