Flashing Led 3D Printed Xmas Tree

I recently purchased an Anet A8 3D printer.

This comes in kit form so I spent a fun couple of days building and trouble-shooting it. One of the advantages of building it yourself is that you have a far better idea of how it works so can fix things better than if it came pre-made.

If you are like me and enjoy making things (why else would you be on Instructables?) then I highly recommend this for a hobby 3D printer. It is also extremely cheap (around 150 USD or less on some sites) compared with other hobby printers,

After I printed a few mods for the printer I was feeling unusually seasonal so decided to make a Xmas decoration.

I used green TPU filament which is flexible, translucent and created a nice tree-ish texture when printed (also it was the only filament I had until my PLA arrives next week...).

I had a few problems printing with this filament on my Anet A8 as it kept spooling up in my extruder. After a lot of searching and trial and error I adjusted my printing speed to 25 mm/s and upped my nozzle temp to 210 degrees. Everything seemed to run perfectly after this.

I found the model here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1913982

But I printed it a lot smaller, just over 9cm in height.

Took about 2 hrs.

I was planning on programming my Arduino to make a nice flashing light effect but when I was digging in my boxes to find some leds, what I thought was a white led turned out to be a flashing RGB one!

Not only does this save a lot of time, it also meant that the tree could be stand-alone.

I soldered 3 together in a triangle pattern, being careful to ensure that all the anodes were soldered together and all the cathodes were soldered together separately. Apologies for the sloppy soldering...

For the power supply I used a 3V button cell in a holder that has an LDR on the underside.

No need for the LDR but it means that my tree only lights up when it is dark.

My flashing led Christmas light!