Heat-powered Christmas Pyramid / Windmill

Bring the cozy magic of the holidays to your home with this charming Christmas Pyramid, perfect for curling up indoors on chilly winter nights.

The design features a Christmas tree with a delightful fuzzy texture, beautifully designed blades, rotating snowflake platform and finished with a star on top!

This single-tier pyramid is perfect for displaying any of your miniature Christmas models. The platform has 6 holes to attach any small model using a short piece of standard 1.75mm filament, alternatively, models can be glued or, if only rotated gently, the models can simply sit on top without spinning off. A seperate profile with the mini models from my photos is included.

How does it work?

The design is inspired by traditional German candle-powered Weihnachts pyramide but with a more modern look.

Simply place above a heat source such as a radiator, electric heater or safely above a fireplace away from flames or extreme heat. The rising warm air, or even a gentle breeze, is enough to gently rotate the pyramid. For best results the platform, shaft and point should sit pefectly central to minimise friction.

Please do not attempt to use candles with this model. PLA and other 3D printed materials can be flammable!

Printing

This model was designed to fit on an A1 mini so will therefore work on any of the Bambu Lab printers. You could scale the model up for the larger bed size, but that is untested and it's likely the tolerances for the fittings will be too loose. Also, the smaller and lighter the model the easier it will be to rotate.

The tree is printed as one piece and was carefully designed to minimise overhangs. Lots of testing went into this part to find the best combination of geometry, fuzzy and seam settings to produce the best looking result.

Assembly

Before assembling, try test fitting the shafts to the star and platform base but don't insert them fully as they may be difficult to remove. It may be a tight fit due to elephants foot and variance in different filaments. It may be worthwhile rounding off the edge of the shafts if they are tight.

When assembling with the tree/frame part, try not to push down hard on the pointed end of the platform as you want to keep this point as sharp as possible so it spins well.