Customizable Ornament (Inspired by Blown Glass)

thingiverse

I wanted to create some Christmas ornaments using 3D printing in the style of my parents' blown-glass decorations. Ryan A. Colyer's Plot Function library made it all possible! Code update December 13th: I added an automatic calculation to fit the shape perfectly onto the cap, but you can still adjust it yourself if needed. Parameters to smooth ripples near the tip and/or cap can also improve printability. Several parameters have been moved to an advanced-tweaks section so you don't need to worry about them unless you want. I reorganized the code and broke it down into multiple functions to make it easier to understand and edit if you need to. I'll try to come up with a better picture; we haven't put up a tree yet this year, and while we bought a wreath, we haven't hung it yet, so I just looped it over the end of the railing. If Customizer is Not Working Sometimes the customizer app gets overloaded and stops working, but you can tweak the code yourself! All you need to do from here is download the ornaments2.scad file. From OpenSCAD's website, download, install, and run OpenSCAD. Open the ornaments2.scad file, change any settings you wish, then preview, render, and export. It's pretty simple, really. If you can use a word processor, you can do this! I put a labeled screen capture into the images showing you what to do. Customizer Caution! It is possible to set parameters that will produce shapes that are impossible to print. Please review the explanation of the settings (see below) before you begin, especially if you are new to 3D printing and can't tell just by looking whether a shape is likely to print well. (I understand that leaving parameters is contrary to Thingiverse's best practices; if people find it too problematic, I would be willing to fork a safer version.)