TL;DR

A tool free, snap fit joints only, moravian star.

update 2023-11-27

Added the all on one plate high speed print profile, less than 8h for the whole star with all parts.

update 2023-1126

• The needed print time is only 11 hours not 24 hours that was the time a mk3 needs.

update 2023-1123

• reorganized the 4 print files:
  - print me first test file
  - 6 big male parts
  - 8 small male parts
  - 12 female parts
• removed gcode
• removed old files

Motivation

Moravian Stars in many shapes are very popular in Europe during the advent time. I wanted to make a free one for the printables.com holiday contest 2022. The main goal was to create a star which could be printed on a prusa mini but with a real good size. So this one is a 45cm version. Stars with that size are sold at amazon for up to 100€.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_star

45cm

The star is made from 26 pieces with up to 18 cm each.
You need no tools and no glue to build it.

Everything is snap fit jointed!

This star is build from:

• 8 triangle male rays
• 6 square male rays
• 12 square female rays

Let's get started

This is a hugh print with a lot of parts, do yourself a favour and print the test patterns first.

This test will show you that your printer calibration is well done and be able to print functional snap fit joints.

I added 3 versions with different tolerances, the final version (easy print) has the highest tolerance. Stiff has lesser tolerance (hard to print) and stiffer the lowest tolerance (die hard to print).

The lower the tolerance the harder to print, if in doubt use the finale version.

24 hours of printing?
No it's only 11h with the bambulab p1 / x1

Overall this is an easy but long print. The build in tolerances are made to let you successful print this great star. The print is a single perimeter print, so i made it slow for your success.

On CoreXY printers you can speed up the print a lot.

The whole 26 rays 45cm star needs nearly 500 g of filament.

BRIM/RAFT

If you like to illuminate the star use a translucent filament and print with 0 bottom layer but raft or brim with less or none distance. Don't worry about the brim it is all inside of the star not visibly from the outside.

outdoor

For outdoor usage i would recommend to use PETG, best is translucent PETG. While the snap fit joints will be strong enough to hold the star together, for outdoor usage i would additional use glue to increase the stability against strong wind.

Glue

Stick the star together without glue and just pure plastic binding glue between the center of the rays. That is much cleaner done after assembling the star.

Assembling

While assembling from ray to ray it would be stiffer to fit the next one in. Start with the 8 middle rays in one ring structure. Build up to a half sphere and use a triangle ray as last one.

Attribution

https://www.printables.com/social/277533-yahbluez/