3D Printed Christmas Tree: Junior Example

Challenge: To produce an original and suitable Christmas tree with potential to include LED lighting.
 

Background: Please note school has now concluded for 2025, our students and our teacher will be back at this stage in February 2026.   In the meantime we are finishing off the year with a series of posts wrapping up 2025 and also including some of the 'best of' highlights of the year,

This challenge was set for the entire class with a range of challenges during the last weeks of school based around the creation of Christmas Trees.   Students created a range of Christmas Trees and AR/VR them into cards and also various challenges around the school.

This challenge was slightly different in that the students (this was created by a seven year old student) had to design a tree and then ultimately the goal was printing the tree and looking at the possibility of using LED lights to light up the tree - similar to how we had worked some of the projects related to our school Market Day for 2025.  

The intention was to include LED lights and potentially use glow-in-the-dark filament to pop the print.

Level of Difficultly: High.   This had a number of elements that the student designed working in conjunction with each other.  Key to this print was how would the LED lights be hung from this design - this was the 'ring' that can be seen wrapping its way around the design.   

Size: The print measures 100mm high, has a base that is 80mm in diameter.   This is the base which extends the furtherest, the tree itself extends 50mm in diameter from the base.

Cost: 72g of filament was used in the production of this tree.  The cost according to Bambu Lab with its price point identifying that the $1.72 to produce the tree.

Timeframe: Three and a half hours using the Bambu H2D.  This was used as during the design the detail that was included (in the groves and in some of the decorations).   We would not have attempted to complete this print using the Snapmaker.  A relatively simple design was completed with grooves (which was intended for the LED lighting).

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: This is a straightforward print in some ways, in other ways (the LED lights) there are complex elements to the prints.   Some of the decoration on this tree looked fine in Tinkercad but didn't translate really well to the printed version.

We are very reluctant to complete prints that had a large level of rafting (waste plastic).  This print had a notable print support under each of the levels of the tree - which as a result meant quite a bit had to be removed.

We have yet to complete the print using glow-in-the-dark filament.  In doing so we would imagine that it would considerable add a level of presentation to the print.   The cost or the print time etc would not increase significantly.