"My First Pandemic" 2020 Ornament

prusaprinters

<p>You might have an ornament to commemorate your first Christmas. But do you have one to remember your first global pandemic? Now you can, with an attractive COVID-shaped ornament.</p> <p>This is a three-color ornament, printable with or without a multi-material/multi-extruder printer. There are also two versions of the text: "My First Pandemic" or "Our First Pandemic". Because it's a thin print, it is also very quick to print (60-90 minutes, depending on your settings).</p> <p>The ornament measures 75×78×2.6 mm, and includes a 2.8mm hole at the top for hanging.</p> <h3>Single-extruder Version</h3> <p>This version of the ornament comes as a single STL, and you create the different colors with manual filament changes at different heights. If your slicer supports it, using ironing on the top layers can give this a really polished look.</p> <p>To make things easier if you're using Prusa Slicer, I've included a 3MF file with the color changes already inserted at the proper layers.</p> <ul> <li><code>ornament-color-change-our-text.stl</code>: Uses the text "Our First Pandemic"</li> <li><code>ornament-color-change-my-text.stl</code>: Uses the text "My First Pandemic"</li> </ul> <p>Both use color changes at heights of 1.6 mm (red→black) and 2.2 mm (black→white).</p> <h3>MMU Version</h3> <p>This version is composed of three different STL files – one for each color. They're labeled according to the colors I used in the pictures, so it's easier to figure out which is which. Or you can use the included 3MF file.</p> <ul> <li>For "My First Pandemic", use:<ul> <li><code>ornament-mmu-black-my-text.stl</code>, <code>ornament-mmu-white-my-text.stl</code>, and <code>ornament-mmu-red.stl</code></li> <li>OR: <code>ornament-mmu-my-text.3mf</code></li> </ul> </li> <li>For "Our First Pandemic", use:<ul> <li><code>ornament-mmu-black-our-text.stl</code>, <code>ornament-mmu-white-our-text.stl</code>, and <code>ornament-mmu-red.stl</code></li> <li>OR: <code>ornament-mmu-our-text.3mf</code></li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>I printed this face-down, to get the nice bed texture on the front of the ornament. The tricky part here is to make sure that you completely fill in each of the colors for a solid design. There are a couple of tricks I employ here to make this work:</p> <ul> <li>Slightly increase your extrusion multiplier, which will ensure that the there aren't gaps at sharp corners. (I increased my from 1.0 to 1.1.)</li> <li>Increase the overlap between perimeters and infill. (PrusaSlicer defaults to 25%, which I upped to 50%.)</li> <li>Reduce or turn off elaphant foot compensation. (I reduced mine from 0.2 to 0.1 mm.)</li> <li>Reduce the gap closing radius, to generate infill in thin features instead of leaving gaps.</li> <li>Choose a bottom layer infill pattern that doesn't leave large gaps. (Check the sliced preview in your slicer.)</li> <li>Reduce the first layer speed. (I went from 20 mm/s to 12 mm/s, but this is probably excessive.)</li> <li>Consider the <em>order</em> that the colors will be printed in. PrusaSlicer will go through the extruders sequentially from 1 to 5. I recommend doing the background (white) before the text (black) so that you'll get sharper corners on the text.</li> </ul> <p>These have already been incorporated into the 3MF version, as well as suggested purge lengths for the red, black, and white that I used.</p> <hr/> <p>This is <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4683445">also available on Thingiverse</a>.</p> <h3>Print instructions</h3><p>Any type of filament should work for this. Just make sure that you use the <em>same type</em> of filament between color changes (i.e., <em>all</em> PLA or <em>all</em> PETG) so that the layers stick together.</p> <p>I recommend printing at 0.2 mm layer height, since this will align with the color changes nicely, plus there's no real benefit to thinner layers on this type of flat print.</p>