I decided this year to begin a new tradition. Every year I have a 3D printer I will design and print a Christmas Tree ornament using my latest and best printer. Hopefully I will buy new printers as they evolve and become better and much like my first dot-matrix printer, I have had a paper printer of one form or other most of my adult life. This year I decided to use my very first 3D printer, the Afinia H479, and make a Christmas Tree ornament that meant something. So I made a miniature version of the ornament printing a Santa hat ornament.

A bit meta, as most people who knew about this pointed out. I liked that.

So while this ornament sits proudly on my own tree right now, I also printed one to send to my mother, and also one to send to Afinia, the makers of this printer.

They liked it so much that they wanted to print one for all of their employees, and asked if I would mind sending them the files. I did not mind. So I sent it to them.

(If you want them, you can also get them here. What? You want them for free?)

So Afinia liked it enough that they sent me this image of the ornaments printed in all of the Premium colors they have available:

Apparently they liked it enough to make it their facebook front page image:

Afinia also sent me a reel of white premium filament, a printer nozzle and a sheet of their new Build Tac sheeting to print on (which I am loving!)

I’m already thinking about next year’s ornament.