3D printed 'happy' flowers in all the colours of the rainbow.

A great way to recycle all your scraps and offcuts of filament.

In this instructable I will show you how to design and print your own 'happy' flowers. They look fab in traditional or 3d printed vases.

I have also attached my flower and vase stls in case you are in a hurry and want to print and go!

Ok lets get started!

Supplies

Computer

3D Printer

Colourful scraps of filament

Step 1: Create the Flower Head

First lets make the stem and head of the flower, we will worry about the petals later.

On your computer go to www.tinkercad.com

Create a new design and add two paraboloids.

Make one slightly shorter than the other, rotate it 180 degrees and move it up until the two paraboloids are just touching (See picture 1)

Allign the 2 shapes and add a 2mm tall 'hole' block to the bottom - this gives the model a flat base for stability

Now group all the objects together and resize to approximately 60-70mm tall.

Now you have a flowerhead, lets make the stem.....

Step 2: Making the Flower Stem

Lets make the stem and attach it to the head.

We will be printing our flower upside-down so the stem has to stick out of the top of the model.

Add a cylinder and make it 3mm wide and 150mm tall

Add a cone and make this 10mm wide by 35 mm tall, raise this up until it is approximately 50-60mm above the workplane.

Allign the cylinder, cone and flowerhead in the x and y axes and group them together (see picture)

Now it's time to add some petals....

Step 3: Adding Lots of Petals

How about some petals?

You can play with the size, shape, number and thickness of the petals, but let me run through how I designed my model's petals as an example for you.

Add a cylinder 0.7mm tall, 60mm long and 3mm wide.

Copy this 3 times, rotate the pieces in 45 degree increments, align and group

Copy this star, rotate by 22.5 degrees and align and group it with the original star.

Repeat the previous step but rotate this star by 11.25 degrees (picture 1)

Stack your star one on top of the other with at least 1mm gap.

Align the stars with your flower, *it is important that you can see gaps between each petal - see picture 2

Change the size of the stars to follow the shape of your flowerhead and when you are happy group it all together (picture 3).

Your flower is now ready to print so export it as an stl.

Don't worry I know it looks a bit odd and nothing like the print - the magic comes with the slicing....

Step 4: Slicing Your Flower

Import your flower into your slicing software, I'm using Prusaslicer.

Select vase (or spiral) mode in your slicer

Vase mode prints your model in one continuous spiral so will only print the outer edge of the model.

Now you can kind of see how your flower will look - make sure it has a solid base and no top layer. If you have any problems with your slicer send me a message, I can help :)

If you want your flower head, petals and stem to be different colours add filament changes to the slice - always change your filament on a layer with no loops.

Once you are happy with your sliced flower - lets print it....