Segmented 5-Point Christmas Star
Description
This design produces a star with a radius of 117.8mm, giving a tip-to-tip distance of 224mm, and a thickness of just over 25mm There are two versions included: one without LED holders and one with them. The LED holders help to keep the LEDs in a regular pattern if you prefer that to the random look. I'll get some pictures of this version posted in due course. I originally planned a simple illuminated Christmas tree topper that a friend had asked me to make. I found a set of battery lights for £1.59, and came up with a simple 2-piece design. But before I'd got the printer fired up, he picked up a ready-made star for £2 in the local bargain shop. I was a little disappointed of course. But I decided to use what I had already designed and to change it into a standalone star for my home. Easy enough, as all I had to do was remove the part designed to sit on the tip of the tree. I'd designed the largest star that I could fit on my Ender 3's bed. But, every time I printed it, I found the tips of the points kept lifting up and distorting the whole print. I tried a few things, such as pads and brims, and even some glue stick adhesive. But the problem wouldn't go away, and I got tired of wasting filament. My solution was to break it into six pieces: 5 wings and a core. This could be printed quite quickly, and slotted together on completion. This meant that a print fail on any one part wouldn't render the whole thing into scrap. I also figured that I could easily re-scale such a design if I wanted a bigger star than I could fit on the bed; I reckon you could double the size easily enough although I'm not sure how the tolerances would scale. The individual parts are quite delicate, and you need to take care to clean up the joints thoroughly before assembly. I had issues with "elephant's foot" on my printer (I clearly need to spend some time getting it dialled back in). But, once cleaned up and slotted together, it results in a pretty sturdy star. For each complete star you need one core and core lid, four ordinary wings, one cable-entry wing, and five wing lids - see pictures. Apart from the assembly tabs on the wings, everything is support-free. It's all a nice friction fit (on my printer at least!), but you might want a bit of cynoacrylate glue if your printer is better dialled in than mine. My light sets were 20 light sets. So this worked out nicely into 3 lights per wing, with the remaining 5 lights in the core. I started with the 3 in the wing next to the cable entry wing, put the lid on, and moved round so that the last wing reached would be the cable entry wing. You can either put a single light in the core as the wire passes from one wing to another, OR you can do it the way I did, which was to work my way round all BUT the cable entry wing, then do the 5 in the core piece first, before finishing with the cable entry wing last. If anyone's still reading this far, I'm really impressed with these little light sets. Whack in two AA batteries and they seem to shine forever. I'm using some cheap Lidl rechargeable cells, and I've had a week's worth of constant illumination out of them already, and they're still going strong! Talking about the lights, the wires on the light sets I bought are quite thick. So I suspect they would block the lights on a longer set. As an experiment, I'm thinking of getting hold of a set of the tiny rice-grain lights, the ones with the tiny solid wires. I think these would make it possible to fit far more lights into the space, without the wires spoiling the overall effect. So that's it; a simple, easy to print design that's certain to make you look like an absolute star! Happy printing, folks!
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