Candle Holder Carousel, Christmas Pyramid

thingiverse

I purchased a German Christmas Carousel this year and wanted to create my own version that could be used throughout the entire year. This design utilizes 14mm carousel candles available on Amazon, but I initially tried using regular tea lights. Unfortunately, they did not produce enough heat to rotate the blades effectively. As candle liners were difficult to locate, I created my own from aluminum foil and a punch tool. This project does require live flames, so it's essential to never leave it unattended when in use. Despite going through multiple candles without issues, caution is always necessary. The original fan blades were printed using PLA+, but they began to warp due to the heat. I reprinted them with 3DXTech ASA material and have had no problems since. ABS might also be a viable option, although I haven't tried it yet. Another challenge was the heat issue caused by burning candles all the way down, which would melt the PLA foil on my initial design due to direct contact. To resolve this, I added a copper coupling to elevate the candle and improve heat dissipation. This modification has been successful in preventing the melting of the PLA. If you're interested in creating one, I've attached some assembly instructions. Friction is a major enemy, so everything needs to spin smoothly and freely. I chose a Pac-Man theme for my design, but kept it open for anyone to customize with their preferred theme. For the ghosts, I used scaled versions of Andrewisme's models (65% for the top and 90% for the lower scared ghost) from Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2840173/files Pac-Man was taken from Zarbuta's model, scaled to 90%, which can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2833881 The Pellets were modeled and attached as an STL file.