Every year a group of my friends have an engineering Secret Santa. The rules are simple: make something cool for under $20 that requires engineering to complete. In years past we’ve seen Google cardboard VR headsets that are 6DOF, match stick rockets, 3D printed fans that explode when used, 3D printed rockets with cardboard launch […]
3D Printed Treetop Star
Solar botics
December 9, 2014
Initially inspired by the Moravian Star on Instructables and the fact that we now carry all kinds of 3D printing filament, we decided to make one of our own glowy holiday star. We have used this thing as source files to create a similar treetop decoration of our own.
After some trial and error (due to the Slicer not cooperating)...
...we printed a whole forest of perfect wintery spiky star-ends.
And, well, we just had to have someone live there for a bit. In this case, a snowman:
Our addressable 5mm LEDs were well suited to light this contraption. We drilled a hole in the bottom of each spike..
..to fit the LED's domed part:
And then wired everything up. It wasn't pretty but the WS2812 LED that we used made it much easier than a conventional RGB LED: rather than 3 separate channels, the WS2812 LED only has a data in and data out. Chain them all together and they work like a charm!
And here's the final product, ready to light up our office with wonderful glowing lights!
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Solarbotics Holiday Schedule
Solarbotics will be slightly altering our holiday hours to enable staff to spend time with friends & family. We will be closed Friday, December 24th to Tuesday, December 28th and Friday, December the 31st. On Monday, January 3rd, 2005 we will resume our normal hours, 9:00am - 6:00pm MST. Solarbotics wishes all the best to […]
Christmas/New Years Holiday Hours
Happy holidays! This is a quick note to announce our holiday schedule, which is going to be as follows: Friday, December 23 - Offices open til 2pm Saturday, December 24 - Tuesday, December 27 -- Closed Wednesday, December 28 - Thursday, December 29 - Open Friday, December 30 -- Offices open til 4pm Saturday, […]
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.