Surprise Christmas Tree

thingiverse

I came up with a Surprise Christmas Tree inspired by surprise eggs, which displays the year when you peer into the star. The hinged halves snap shut satisfyingly if your retraction/extrusion settings are just right. I'm a big fan of printing with PETG, but PLA works great too. To get the best results, it's essential to print the tree upside down. If you can manage to get a solid bond between the print and your bed, you might be able to skip the raft altogether. I always manually place some support under the first "tear" of the tree from the base when using Simplify3D, which gives me the confidence that it will succeed without affecting the surface finish.