Printing 3D Christmas Tree Ornaments

Recently my wife found some interesting Christmas-tree ornaments in a print catalog. She showed them to me and I told her I could 3D print them for significantly less money. While I had filament that would have worked, I ordered special stuff with metallic flakes in it. I picked up a spool of gold flake and a spool of silver flake. Once it arrived, I printed up an ornament very similar to what my wife found in the catalog. It only cost me about 30 cents.

The ornament turned out well but I got to thinking there is so much more I could do and I still had a lot of filament left over. I found a few more designs and gave the prints a try. The first one turned out a lot different than expected. The pictures showed it with a lot of intricate cutout work. That means someone used a sharp razor to remove some of the plastic. I didn't want to do that so I found another ornament. It is a beautiful 8-point snowflake with a nativity scene in the middle of it.

I had been using the gold filament and rather than swap it for the silver, I printed a test ornament. It turned out very regal. Then I swapped colors and the silver turned out amazing. I shared it with my son who also has a 3D printer. He took it one step further and scaled the ornament so he could print 4 at once. My one ornament is so large it takes up most of the print bed so I can only print one at a time. Scaling it down to 75 percent is all it took to increase that number to 4.

This week is Thanksgiving and my son plans to hand 12 of the ornaments out to his extended family so they can decorate the tree with them this year. It is a little thing to help start the Holiday Season right. I'll be interested to hear how the ornaments are received.