Animate your Christmas tree with the Orbital Sleigh Ride! This ornament uses a small hobby motor to propel Santa's sleigh around the world. The printing is easy with little to no post processing. The best part is the electronics are less than $10 total! Don't want to bust out the soldering iron? Use the plug to attach the arm to the base and still let it spin manually!

Happy Holidays!

Ok now that the salesman pitch is over, I had a great time designing, prototyping, and finalizing this ornament and it is my first "big" project that I've posted. I designed this in Solid Works with the exception of the sleigh which was done in tinkercad. I'm no master at either but I am very proud with how well it came out. The most time consuming part was the interlocking halves. Designing things like this is always my favorite part because its a learning experience. The sleigh was also the first time I paused a print to switch filament mid-print and I'm very pleased with how it came out.

The motor I used was a $3 1.5-3 volt hobby motor I picked up from my local RC hobby store and measures 1.25" in diameter. The important thing is that the shaft is 1/4" or longer or else the arm wont connect to the motor. I used hot glue to keep the motor in place because there's some wiggle room. I also used a $4 potentiometer from Guitar Center to control the speed and I had the button cell holder in my junk bin. Everything should fit inside with room to spare. If you don't have access to a motor, I made a "plug" that fits in the motor slot and the arm fits snugly in the open end, this way it can still orbit freely.

I sketched, taped, and painted the Earth on the ornament because my prototyping filament was green and all I had to do was paint the blue ocean. I started by covering the ball in masking tape and sketched out the continents then used a hobby knife to cut out the oceans. (Make sure to cut the equator so you can separate the halves!) Two coats of blue later and with the exception with some bleeding over Canada it looked pretty good. (Painting isn't my strong suit)