Tropical Flower Wind Spinner

Plumeria flowers

This easy-printing wind spinner depicts a beautiful plumeria flower.  Plumeria are native to tropical portions of the Americas but have become popular all around the world, and are often associated with Hawai'i where they are commonly used in leis.  They feature five petals with soft color gradients,have a small recessed center rather than a raised flower head, and natural curve that makes them a great fit for catching wind in a garden spinner.
 

Plumeria come in a range of colors, from the classic yellow and white to pinks, peaches, oranges, and reds

Design and printing

This spinner is designed to be very easy to print and assemble.  The flower prints as a single object with five curved petals, needing a small amount of supports on the underside where the petals begin to curve up from the plate.  It uses a common 608 skateboard bearing (608ZZ or 608RS, very inexpensive in bulk and several good versions were recently added to Maker's Supply), and mounts onto a garden pole.
 

Parts:

• One-piece flower body
• Bearing adapter
• Pole adapter
• 608 bearing (user supplied)
• Pole (user supplied)
   

The flower itself is thin to keep it lightweight and easy to spin, so the bearing has to sit  below the flower rather than inside the petal body. The bearing fits into a separate adapter piece that slots into the underside of the flower, keeping the flower surface flat. This part fits tight but is intended to be glued or epoxied in place.

Mounting options
The standard pole adapter is designed to press-fit onto typical garden plant-support poles and can accomodate a range of pole diameters. The dark green plastic-coated garden stakes are a perfect fit.
 

I also included a clamp-style adapter for black metal fence posts that can commonly be found at big box hardware stores in the US for a few dollars. These are very sturdy and have a flat mushroom-shaped top that helps with hammering them into the ground. The adapter fits around the post head and is meant to be secured with adhesive.

Bearings
Inexpensive 608 bearings often come packed with grease, meant for heavier duty use cases than wind spinners.  For better spinning, I recommend cleaning the grease out with a solvent and then lubricating the bearing with a light oil, same stuff we use on our printers.  This is a very common bearing-prep step and it's easy to look up if you haven't done it before.  It makes a big difference and is worth doing.

Colors
The spinners shown in the photos here were printed in white ASA, hand painted with hobby acrylic paints, left to dry overnight, and then finished with a couple coats of Krylon Fusion All-In-One clear coat.  This method works well on ASA/ABS as well as PLA if you start with a thin layer first, let that dry, and then paint as normal.  It is not likely to work well on PETG.

If you want to print them in multicolor, I suggest using a large sphere brush and keeping the color changes consistent on both sides of each petal. This avoids fragile thin layers of different colors, especially near the edges.

Simple assembly: