Snowflake Christmas Ornament v5

ZigZag Christmas Ornament

##Not to Be Sold
**I'm sharing my files so that you can make them for yourselves or give them away as gifts. I hope you enjoy them. I do not authorize sale of my work by anyone. Please don't ask me.**

##About the Design
This is an elegant abstract sculpture masquerading as a Christmas ornament. It almost seems to change shape as you rotate it in different directions.

This ornament prints well with just a single perimeter. That makes it very light and lets the most light through is you use transparent/translucent filament. In fact, it positively glows. It also looks amazing printed with bichromatic or trichromatic filaments. 

The print shown in clear was printed with Matterhackers Transparent PLA. They were printed on an AnyCubic Mega S and sliced using Cura. I'll be adding pictures soon that show the ornament printed with Matterhackers Quantum Raspberry Gold and Translucent Blue printed on a Prusa MK3S+ sliced using PrusaSlicer.

##Resizing
These should scale up well, but I'm not sure how much smaller you could print them using a consumer FDM printer. Using a resin printer, you could probably print them much smaller.

##Print Time
About 5 hours

##Print Settings
The trickiest parts to print is the top of the stems. Using FDM, if you don't temp, speed, flow, and cooling right, the thin parts of the stem will melt as you print. Thinner walls help. If that's not enough, try increasing the layer height.

*Thickness*

* Layer thickness: .15 mm
* Wall thickness: 0.4 mm.

*Infill*
Using PrusaSlicer, you won't need infill. Just set top and bottom to 1 layer and minimum shell thickness to 0.15 mm. That will keep the ornament light (about 13 grams) and will let the most light through if you use translucent/transparent PLA. 

If you use Cura, I would use support blockers set to 1-3 layers high to add infill just in those areas that are unsupported.

*Speed*
With PrusaSclier, I used the default speed settings for my printer and generic PLA. In cura, I used:
* Outer Wall: 35 mm/sec
* Inner Wall: 40 mm/sec
* Travel Speed: 60 mm/sec

*Build Plate Adhesion*
I used a brim. With the supports, you shouldn't need a raft.

*Supports*
You will probably need supports for both bed adhesion and the overhang on the first few layers. You shouldn't need supports for the loop at the top. Adding them would just increase the chances the supports broke and caused the print to fail. If you get supports inside the ball, just add a support blocker.

* Support Structure: Normal
* Support Placement: Touching Buildplate
* Support Overhang Angle: 60 Degrees (Cura) and 67 (PrusaSlicer)

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Model originally uploaded to Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5100757.

I designed this using Affiinity Designer to create cross-sections and then did everything else in Blender. 

I designed theis to print easily, to be light, and to look elegant when printed in one color. I recommend using a metallic or silky filament (or spray paint the final print with a metallic paint). The metallic or silky highlights will catch the light and show off the complex geometry of the ornaments.

At 100%, this is 80mm wide, which is a nice size for trees 1.5 meter and larger. However, I scaled a similar design to 60% and it looks great. At that size, it will work well on trees as small as 0.5 meter high. You may be able to scale this down slightly smaller than 60%, but I haven't tried it. If you do and it works, please post a comment.

PRINT SETTINGS

To make the print as light as possible, I printed at just 0.4mm walls and 0.45mm top/bottom thickness. I also used Cura's Support Blocker and Per Model Setting's "Modify Settings for Overlaps" to add 20% infill - but just for the bottom 6mm of the ornament. I recommend a layer height of 0.15mm.

You won't need a raft, but I recommend using a brim.

There are other parts of the ornaments that appear to need infill, but they are self-healing and do not show in the final print if you leave out the infill. Infill is really only needed to the bottom of the inside of the ornament. Adding infill everywhere will really increase the weight, which means it may not work on all Christmas trees.

For supports, I used:

- Support Placement: Everywhere
- Support Overhang Angle: 60 degrees
- Support Pattern: Concentric
- Support Density: 15%
- Enable Support Brim: Yes
- Support Brim: 3mm
- Support Roof Density: 75%
- Support Floor Density: 50%

If you print with 0.4mm walls and you wind up with holes in your print, I recommend increasing the flow rate slightly and maybe reduce travel and print speeds.


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