Inspired by the beautiful Christmas ornaments created by Dazus K, I tried my hand at an ornament of my own. The idea was to create a ball structure of separate spiralized arms, but with more space in between to see the inside of the sphere - and place a small nativity scene in it.
Depending on your print settings, you may need to put it on a stronger branch of your tree (my print came out at ~28 g).
The example in the first image was printed with silky silver filament (3DJake Ultra-Satin Silver PLA) on a 0.4 mm nozzle, the second one with wood filament on a 0.6 mm nozzle.
You can either assemble the nativity scene to your liking in your CAD tool or slicer and then print it all in one go (that's what I did), or print the figurines separately (potentially even with a different filament) and glue them onto the pedestal later - the opening in the front is large enough for this. (Hint: If you do that and use the "concentric" top surface pattern, you even get a nice star effect on the pedestal's surface!)
The figurines are taken from the Nativity Set by titancraft, with a little tweaking for better printability. I didn't upload all the figurines from the original set, but you can just take the original ones to mix and match.
There are two versions of the ornament, one with and one without additional supports. With the ornaments by dazus, the additional supports proved to help with the stability of the ornament during the print, so I used the same principle here.
Recommended Print Settings
You can use the attached 3mf project in PrusaSlicer as a basis (it also contains some custom modifiers) or use the following settings:
- Minimum shell thickness top/bottom: 0.5 mm or less
- Perimeter lines: 2
- Infill density: 8-10%
- Infill pattern: Lightning or Support Cubic
- Generate supports: Yes
- Support on build plate only: Yes
- Support Interface Pattern: Concentric
Post-Printing
Be careful when detaching the supports after printing. The arms of the sphere are delicate. This is even more important when using woodfill PLA, due to its brittle nature.
The custom supports should come off easily and leave hardly any noticeable marks. The bottom supports, however, can require a little more effort to detach cleanly.
Nativity Christmas Ornament
by BastelBodo · original on Printables ↗
Seasonal designs / Winter & Christmas & New Year's
♥ 386⬇ 1.8k🖨 9 prints
Print profiles
NativityBall-NoSupports.stl
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baby-jesus.stl
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NativityBall-WithFigures-NoSupports.stl
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sheep-standing.stl
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NativityBall-WithSupports.stl
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NativityBall-WithFigures-WithSupports.stlDEFAULT
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manger.stl
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sheep-sitting.stl
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joseph.stl
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mary.stl
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NativityBall.3mf
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