Sometimes, when you're in a rush to 3D print something, technology doesn't want to cooperate with you. I am here to share the story of my failed Grateful Dead christmas ornament.

Step 1: Designing Your Ornament

I picked a fairly simple design for my ornament. A basic sphere with a decal embossed to the front. I used Autodesk Inventor 2016 to create this

Step 2: Design Breakdown:

First i started with a Freeform sphere in inventor as the basic shape of my ornament. I sized it up to be 2 inches tall and four inches in diameter. A basic ornament size.

After creating the sphere I took to designing the graphic. I placed a work plane offset from the face of the sphere and put down a graphic of the Grateful Dead "Steal Your Face" skull. I used the line tool on the 2D drawing to trace the lightning bolt. After tracing it i deleted the image so i could just work with the drawing.

I then took to embossing the bolt to the sphere. I lined it up and set the emboss to the face of the sphere.

The last steo was making a part where the hook could go to hang the ornament. I placed a freeform cube on the top of the sphere, sunk it in a little, then used the hole tool to make a hole for the hook.
After all this it was time to export and print.

Step 3: Printing the Ornament...

For a printing view without using the real printer (since that didnt work) here are the files on the Makerbot Software
So this should have been the easy part, put the SD card into the printer, select the file, and let it print.
Yeah I was wrong.

After following proper procedure on setting the Makerbot for printing and selecting my file, I sat back and waited to see what was going on.

The first issue I came across was the filament just not sticking to the bed. The rafts would come out and basically spew allover the place and stick to the nozzle. This happened three times and then finally it started to print out right. Or so i thought.

I left the classroom and didn't check up until the next day. For whatever reason only half of my ornament decided it wanted to print leaving me with a honeycombed half circle. After this came out I finally gave up and figured i'd wait until after christmas break, since my christmas tree stays up until mardi gras anyway.

Once again, a week later, the file just wouldn't print. So here I am telling you now.
NEVER EVER wait last minute to 3D print something.