Christmas and Holiday Wreath (Locking Assembly)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!

This project is inspired by my favorite interlocking blocks.  I like the creative designs other people have shared, but I wanted to make my own version and add extra features.  I modeled everything from scratch.

Key Features 

• No hardware, just printed parts

• No supports

• Threaded connectors secure everything

  • No guessing at tolerances for a friction fit

• Locking tabs for hexagon and octagon wreaths

• Single and multicolor decorations 

• Built-in hanger

Size

I made these leaves and branches at a smaller scale than other designs.  This saved me a lot of time because I can fit two on my printer.  The inner diameter for holes is 17.6 mm, and the outer diameter is 26.4 mm.  Studs are 6.6 mm tall.

You can take a “standard” size decoration (30 mm outer diameter) and scale it to 88% to fit this design.  There are two important notes.  First, scaling like this also shrinks the original tolerance, so you may want to use a slightly higher value.  Second, scaling to 88% will not match the inner diameter, but it does not look like other designs use this geometry.

Connectors and Parts

You need decorations at the “corners".  They form a nut and bolt pair that locks everything in place.  

Hexagon wreath required parts:

• 3 top leaves

• 2 bottom leaves 

• 1 hanger (bottom) leaf

• 6 decorations 

• 6 double height bolts 

Octagon wreath required parts:

• 4 top leaves 

• 3 bottom leaves 

• 1 hanger (bottom) leaf

• 8 decorations 

• 8 double height bolts 

Add extra decorations to the four small holes on leaves with single height bolts.

Decorations and Colors 

I made decorations that use a single color, but more colors = more fun.

Since I do not have an automatic filament changer, I made designs that use first layer color changes.  This amounts to 2 - 3 manual swaps at the start of a print.  With this approach, you need to be careful using dark colors on top of light or semi transparent colors – some of the color can bleed through.

The realistic tree leaves have an extra outline because my green leaves did not stand out against green branches.  

First layers are 0.24 mm thick in my models, but a slicer should easily round down to 0.2 mm if that is what you use.

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy!